You Know You Don't Post Enough When...

...You can't remember the URL for your own blog. I had to go to my seester's blog and click on her link for my blog in order to refresh my memory. Okay, everyone, let's all say it together...Gina fails!
Anyway...so I'm in between projects to get done today, so I thought I'd give a bit of an update on what I've been up to lately. Some of it I don't really want to talk about or get into right now, so if you REALLY want to know about that part of my life, feel free to comment with your email address, if I don't already have it. But it's probably not as exciting as I'm sure you're hoping for it to be.
I'm currently working/planning on some Christmas presents for my family. I can't go into the specifics, even though the only presents that I have the ideas for are all for the nieces and nephews. I'm sure that most of them are too young to even care about blogs, especially mine. But for some reason I have this need to keep their present ideas from their parents...with the exception of my seester. I have to run my ideas past somebody, right? Anyway, I'm still trying to come up with some ideas for the adults. That's the tough part.
I've also got a few crafty ideas stirring in my head that I might try to sell at some point, if I can work up the ambition and the supplies. Some of it I already have, and I might just use some other stuff that I had been planning on sending to the D.I. I'm planning on making beaded lanyards (I've got one that I've been using that lots of people have commented on, and I would have posted a picture here, but I accidentally left it at my seester's house after the Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe I'll have to make a stop there in the next few days so I can get it. My niece was having a blast putting it around her neck and talking about how "pitty" it was. I also have an idea for some cute hair clips that should be fairly easy to make. Hopefully I'll be able to make some and post some pictures. But please don't look forward to it, because knowing my history, it'll be several months before anything else gets posted.
I also started last night with my church calling. I'm an indexer, which means I get to pull demographic information from old census and military draft records. It's actually kind of fun, and I already indexed about 170+ names just last night. Anyone can do it, just set up an LDS account and then go to indexing.familysearch.org and sign in! I'm excited to be able to help those that weren't able to hear the gospel before they died. And it's been fun as I've indexed some draft records to see where some of these people were born. So far I've seen names of people that were born in Italy, Poland, Greece, Russia, and Czechoslovakia. There may be more, but that's all I've got right now.
The other thing I need to do that absolutely needs to get done today is to put some music on an iPod for my Andrea friend. Some of my friends (and former roommates) have bestowed upon me the nickname of \m/(Rocker) Gina. I'm their go-to person when they need music for something, or if they heard a song on the radio and only remember part of the lyrics, and they need to know what song it was. I'm even considering buying myself a keytar (which is pretty much a portable keyboard on a guitar strap) and joining a band. I even have a name for said band, thanks to Andrea's mom (Mama Sayre)...Check this out...Rocker Gina and the Gene Pool. Awesome name, I think! What do you think?

Note to Self...

Never say you're going to do something that you know isn't going to happen.

In my last post, I explained my game plan to blog more often. I said that each week, I would try something new and then report back the following week. Four months later, and I'm just now reporting on my Twitter experience. Feel free to award me with a big, fat F.

As far as Twitter goes...the jury is still out. I know, I know, I've been on Twitter for four months already (that's a lot of weeks, by the way), I should have a decent opinion by now. But I don't. So the best thing I can do at this point is to offer a few pros and cons of Twitter.

Pros:

• Instant gratification. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing, with just a few clicks on my phone, I can check in on whatever is new with all of the people/entities that I follow. And in some cases, updates are sent to my phone as a text message.
• Fascinating information. One of the entities I follow is full of the most interesting, if useless, facts. Did you know that a chocolate bar has an average of eight insect legs in it? And don't tell me you're surprised by that knowledge. I've never been inside a chocolate factory (although that might be a bit of a dream come true...Love me some chocolate!), but I'm pretty sure there are large vats of chocolate that don't have much of anything covering them...or maybe that's just how I envision factories, thanks to the years of my youth watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
  

Cons:

• Waste of time. While it is interesting to read up on and get updates on everyone that I follow, is it really imperative for me to know that so-and-so is putting out a new album, or that there's a giveaway tomorrow on a radio station program that I don't even get to listen to anymore, or that if you bite down on a Wint-O-Green Life Saver in the dark, you will see sparks? (The last one I already knew, but that one was for all of you who wanted to hear a random fact today) The point is that yes, it's true, my brain is full of trivia that's useful only when playing Cranium and the challenge is to guess what song is being hummed, and I'm such a nerd (particularly when it comes to music) that I know within about a dozen notes that the song is "Material World" by Madonna. Why should I add to the massive amount of useless facts already shoved into my head instead of learning something new that's actually useful?

So after all of that, for now, I remain a Twitterer (if that's even a word). To be honest, I'm mostly a follower because I'm pretty sure there's nobody out there that's that interested in knowing what I had for breakfast yesterday (french toast with a side of bacon) or what I did last Saturday (attended the Scottish Festival and discovered a great Celtic band, the Wicked Tinkers-you should check them out, and if you live near me, let me know if you're interested and I may let you borrow a CD or two so you, too, can marvel at how a band can merge the bagpipes and a didgeridoo and make fantastic, entertaining music).

Tweet Tweeter Tweet Tweet

Okay, friends, here's the plan. In an effort to get myself to do more blogging, and to help make it interesting, I am going to try something different...for me, anyway. Once a week, I am going to try something new, and the following week, I will report my findings/opinions/comments/etc. This week's experiment: Twitter. Hopefully, most people that know me know that I am not the kind of person that jumps on the fad train just because it's there or because everyone else is doing it. Granted, I've been on the Facebook wagon for several years, but even with Facebook, it's been difficult to avoid the barrage of FarmVille invites (I will never succumb!).
I considered a few months ago signing up for Twitter, but eventually steered myself away because I didn't need yet another thing to waste my time with. And to be honest, this week really isn't the best week to be starting a time-waster. We've got some massive training starting this week, and I'm involved in the preparation for that. Wish I would have remembered that prior to coming up with my hare-brained plan, but when do I ever think all of my plans through?

Oh yeah, one more thing...if you want to follow me on twitter, here's the place to go...

ginarj

Enjoy!