New Commenting System Update

(See entry below for background to this post.)


I contacted the blog designer this morning about the comment system and she said that she can definitely get it moved to under the posts instead of in the right column where she placed it originally.  However, she doesn't work on weekends so it will be a couple days before she gets to it.  In the meantime, just carry on as usual with the old commenting system.


And thanks to Jodi for suggesting in the comments suggestion that everyone introduce themselves; when the new system is up and running, that will be a cool thing to do.


I have had a way too busy day and am happily headed to bed.  

Comments. A New Era.

One of the things I’ve loved best about blogging over these past nine years has been the comments that have come in—literally thousands of comments over those years.  I’ve had the privilege and joy of getting to know you and I’ve gotten to discover fascinating pieces of your lives, learn how you think, find out what you believe and learn what you find to be inspiring and funny.  


The only frustrating part about it has been that it’s difficult to have much of a dialogue between you and me and between you and the other commenters.
I think the Smithellaneous readers have turned into a wonderful community of long distance friends but I think a different comment format could take it an even better place.  


 And so?  I am very excited to let you know that in the next few hours, a new commenting system will be installed here on Smithellaneous.   It will allow me to easily respond to each individual comment (each comment thread will be hooked together) and it will also allow you all to interact with each other and respond to what they have to say.

I’ve been wanting to do this for about a year now because I’ve seen the system on other blogs and absolutely loved it.  However, I have tried to install it several times on my own and run up against a lack of sufficient technical knowledge wall every single time.  I finally got smart and contacted a blog designed to install it for me, which she will be doing within the next day.

The only (small, teeny, tiny) thing you will have to do to switch over is to take about 45 seconds and create a user account. And then?  You’ll be good to go.


I can’t tell you pumped I am about this chance to turn a largely one-way conversation into a multi-person, multi-city, multi-state, multi-country conversation


Welcome to the New Smithellaneous Commenting Era!  I’m glad you’re here!



I’ll close out with a few pictures I took this morning of an area next door to downtown Manteo.

Breathing. Blue.

Breathing.

Although I’ve had COPD for about six years now, for most of that time I haven’t been on any daily medication.   I tried several in the past and not only did I not see appreciable improvement, the medications also affected my vocal cords and made it next to impossible for me to sing without hoarseness. 
So. The pulmonologist took me off everything except my rescue inhaler and that was that.
As I’ve written before,  after my cancer surgeries last year I went from being able to blow 350 on a peak flow meter down to 300 with 600 being normal for my age.  And to be quite honest, that was rather discouraging for me.  I couldn’t help but think, “Where will I be a year from now?  Or five years from now?” 
Downward trends in breathing are never terribly heartening.
Well.  When I went to the new pulmonologist last week, he did some tests and then sent me home with a sample of Spiriva to try. I took it along with me without any great feeling of enthusiasm because nothing’s ever helped me before. 
But I am all about being a cooperative patient and so for the past five days, I’ve used the Spiriva every morning.  And yesterday?  I blew a 375 on the meter!  Three. Seventy. Five. 
Can you believe it?  And so far, my voice feels fine—no hoarseness, no strain, no nothing.

So today I am one happy, grateful, breathing-a-little easier woman.

Blue. 

If you love the color blue, you will love the pictures below.

Before you peruse them however, please know that I donated several pints of blood to the Marauding Manteo Mosquitos in the taking of said photos. I have never seen so many mosquitos in my entire life.  Not. Ever. 

But I squirted on some skeeter spray and ferried forth into the fray with fervent, fevered, (f)photographic fervor. 

(These were all taken in a gorgeous harbor front neighborhood about a mile from where we live.)

Wedding Wednesday: (Plus a Honeymoon Sneak Peak!)

I don’t know who the wise guy is that’s making that goofy face but it’s 
quite obvious that he needed better parenting in his formative years.

Let me just say that if someone was holding me off the floor sideways like this? 
I would not be smiling. 
I would be yelling in a highly hysterical manner.

Trust me on that.

Nathan has been blessed with some truly great friends. 
Michael (on Nathan’s right) was his best man and also went with him to
Jerusalem during their sophomore year of college.
And the other two guys are just all around wonderful fellas. 

I remember all the times Steve helped get Nathan ready for church
when he was a baby and a toddler.

Here he is helping him one last time.

Sniff.

The Belle of the Ball and Her Belle-ettes.

Love this perspective.

Awaiting the first glimpse of the First Lady of his heart.

That is one happy mama-of-the-bride!

After twenty-two years of being Nathan’s mom, I thought
I had all the expressions of his face memorized. 
His wedding day changed all that. 

I saw new expressions of joy; new expressions of love.

Oh yeah.  And I also saw this.
Did I give him permission to get all grown up and
 go around kissing beautiful women in public?
Did I?

Sigh. Yeah, I guess I did.

Although it seems to me that Nathan wasn’t the only handsome man Meagan was sharin’ the love with that day.
Here she is with her most darling nephew, Spencer. 
(Spencer’s dad was one of the two ministers who performed the ceremony.)

I’m just not sure if the six of us could have smiled any bigger. 
What a joyful day!

After the ceremony, it was on to the hard work of picture taking. 
And water drinking. 
Can you tell that the bride and her party were dealing with
 some pretty intense Florida heat?
Of course, being Southern belles, they did not sweat.

They glistened.

What a bunch of purdy (glistening) ladies.

It may just be me, but the two of them look awfully
grown up standing there together.
I still can’t quite believe I am looking at a picture of
Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Smith.

My son!  My daughter-in-law!  They’re married! I’m a mother-in-law! 
Someday they will me a grandma!

(insertdeepcalmingbreath here.)

Okay.  May  I just say one more time that this guy seems to be just a little wacky in the face making department? 
I hope his wife has plenty of patience stored up;
she will certainly need it for the next sixty years
of living with her goofy groom.

Guess what?  
Before I close, I have preview for you! 
Next Wednesday there will be more wedding pictures—
plus some honeymoon pictures!
Like these!

Thanks for stopping by Wedding Wednesday.

Helpful.

Since I dearly love finding (and using) helpful tips (tech and otherwise), I thought that I’d be extra helpful today and helpfully pass along some of those helpful tips to you to help you to discover helpful tips and to be . .  um . . . helped.

Helpful Tip Number One: Fences

If there is one computer-esque thing that I really hate, it’s to turn on my computer and be confronted with a desktop littered with a dizzyingly unattractive array of scattered icons.  It just steals the happy right from my heart.

To illustrate: this is a recent screen shot which actually isn’t half as cluttered as it sometimes is. 

With this latest trick I have found, I can go from the picture above to the picture below in a simple double click.

From messy to completely clean.  (Now if only there was a similar button to push for my bedside table.)

So how did I do that?

I thought you’d never ask.

I downloaded a free gizmo called Fences   Here’s a brief description:

Fences lets users clean up their desktop icons in moments. Users draw "fences" on their desktop which enables users to drag and drop icons into them. Users can have fences show and hide by double-clicking on the desktop. In addition, users can control which icons show and hide when the desktop is double-clicked on allowing for easy desktop clean-up.

I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to instantly have a clean desk top and then, in another instant, have all the icons reappear when I need them.


Just like magic.

Fences has made me a happy, happy woman.

Helpful Tip Number Two: Read It Later

Have you ever been surfing the web and come across something that looked intriguing but you only had five minutes to spare before you had to start cooking dinner?  Yeah, me too.

That’s why I was delighted to find something called Read It Later. There are several Read It Later applications for different Internet Providers  (you can Google it) but I use the one for Chrome which can be found here.  I just right click on the page I want to come back to and it adds the page to my Read It Later list.  When I have a few spare minutes to read, I just open that page and all the things I’ve saved are lined up right in front of me for my perusal.

Love. It. 

Helpful And (Really) Scintillating Tip Number Three: Stumble Upon

I just recently found this site and every time I spend even five minutes there, I leave feeling inspired and challenged and refreshed. 

Simple concept. 

You are presented with a list of interests and you can check as few or as many as you want--from photography to cooking to quotations to gadgets to oddities to education to scuba diving to hunting to religion.  


Once your preferences are saved, you merely click the “stumble upon” button and voila’!  An article or a photo or a helpful tidbit of some sort pops up from one of your categories.    


The cool part of it is that you never know what sort of info from which of your categories is going to appear next so the temptation is always to want to see “just one more.”  It’s so much fun! 

Of course, one of the interests I selected was photography and I have seen some of the most amazing pictures over the past couple weeks—truly magnificent, jaw dropping photos.

And then there also pictures that crop up like this one.  Dontcha just love it?

 

Here are a couple more "sample links" I’ve recently discovered on Stumble Upon.

Book Mooch

A page with dozens of free apps and downloads.

(Edited to add:  Stumble Upon has 15 millions members, so it's obviously a well used and well loved program. However, Vickie just left a comment that her son has had some problems with getting viruses while using it so I wanted to be sure to mention that.  Thanks, Vickie, for pointing that out.)

Helpful Tip Number Four:  Organizing Unwieldy, Ever Multiplying Cables

This tip is from the How To Geeks Newsletter and I fell in love with as soon as I saw it.  I had just been staring morosely at all the cables in my life and wishing fervently that there was a simple, inexpensive solution to organizing them. 
And then?  I saw this.   
Whoever said that fervent wishing does not accomplish anything obviously didn’t know what they were talking about.Here’s the reprinted article submitted by one of their readers.

With so many cords all tumbling around in the pocket of some computer bag, there tends to be some sort of intermingling that takes place and when you pull the one cord you need, the entire pocket empties and you end up holding what looks like a ball of deadly vipers. 

I began thinking the other night of a way that I can keep these cords in a easy to use, yet portable container that is flexible and will fit easily into any bag I choose to carry. I wanted something that I can set up in file cabinet type fashion where I’m not rifling through everything to find that one cord I need. 

Then, it dawned on me. Almost everyone still has that CD case lying around. So, I opened up the junk drawer, pulled out my Case Logic circular CD case, and began to file my cords one by one in the now empty CD sleeve.

Regular Case Logic Circular CD case

Cable filing system.

I even have a place in the back for my screen rag.

Anyone else have Helpful Tips to share in the comments this week?  All us Smithellaneous folks would to read them.

(Non Helpful) Bonus Pictures

I’m including these simply because they make me smile.

Comments:

MN Mom: “Do you get the same beautiful fall colors we have here in the Upper Midwest? Hope so!”


We do get some pretty colors here since Manteo has many different kinds of trees; however, I have fond memories of fall in the Midwest and it is drop dead gorgeous there.  Fall and Spring are my two favorite seasons so I’m looking forward to the chill in the air and the colors that are coming.  Mr. Nikon and I are definitely going to take a few fall jaunts!


Mel said, Hi Becky:  “I just love seeing the pictures also. Megan and Nathan really do have the most wonderful smiles. Their playfulness comes through in every picture. I would like to know what song they picked for the first dance and did they have a special song for the father/daughter and mother/son dances?”


They danced to “Lucky”  by Jason Mraz and Colbie Cailat.  I had never heard it before but it is such a cool song and well worth looking up on YouTube.

Here are some of the lyrics:
Lucky I'm in love with my best friend,
Lucky to have been where I have been,
Lucky to be coming home again.

Meagan and her dad danced to “Cinderella” by Steve Curtis Chapman which will make any parent cry. And Nathan and I danced to “Find Your Wings,” by Mark Harris, which is absolutely gorgeous.


Isn’t it amazing the way special songs like these make up the moments and the soundtracks of our lives?


And yes, I do agree that Nathan and Meagan both have wonderful smiles that light up the fun they’re always having!

Doctor Report. Bed.

Just got back from Greenville at 8:30 pm since my appointment got delayed.  I am wiped out!

But happily there is good news to report.  The pulmonologist said that from everything he could discern from the extensive breathing tests done today, I am basically holding my own. There were a few areas where I have lost ground and a couple other areas where I gained ground so the overall result kind of averages out to "no change."   Which is better than "getting worse!"

I'll take what I can get and am extra thankful tonight that I am not coming home with a gloomy report.

And now?  Since I've been awake since 4 am and gone from the house for 12 hours, I am off to my wonderful, marvelous, comfy, cozy, heated mattress padded bed.

Today.

Today I go to Greenville for a doctor’s appointment, an appointment unrelated to my breast cancer journey of the last eighteen months.  Today I will be revisiting my other health concern: COPD. 

Although come to think of it, it seems as though the two conditions have become somewhat interrelated because ever since last summer’s three cancer surgeries, I have definitely lost lung capacity.  Before cancer, I could blow a 350 on my peak flow meter but since the surgeries, I have to work really hard to even get up to 300.   (Normal for a woman my age is about 600.)

I haven’t been to a pulmonologist in a year and a half so today they will run the full battery of pulmonary function tests before I meet with the pulmonologist to go over the results.  And frankly? I’m a bit worried about what I might hear. 

So.  That’s what’s going on.

A scary day of sorts, but on the bright side, any trip to Greenville also includes the thrift store/Chick-Fil-A stops so the day won’t be a complete wash; I firmly believe that any day that includes a thrift store is a good day indeed!

Last week, Mr. Nikon and I took a little jaunt to the downtown water front area right about dusk. Despite being almost carried away by flocks—not swarms--of mosquitos, it was a relaxing evening of picture capturing.

And one last thing before I go.  .  .

I promise I won’t mention this frequently, but a short ways down the right column of the blog is a little box called BlogHer Store.  (You can use the scroll bar on the right to see all the items.)   Every day, they feature nifty, top rated kitchen items, complete with insightful reviews from users.    I have an advertising agreement with BlogHer and receive 10% from any purchases made there.

As much as I would love to take the proceeds and put them straight into the Becky Smith Thrift Store Fund, I’m afraid that instead they have to go into the (boring but necessary) places like Pay the Doctor and Pay Nathan’s College Bills funds.

Here’s a sample of what you’ll find over there and may I just say that I am almost tempted to get this handy dandy item myself.  I get slightly stressed  when I make pasta because it turns out differently every time and I’m never quite sure how much water/pasta/salt/oil to use.  This seems to take the guesswork out of all of that—plus it’s for the microwave and it’s fast!

Fasta Pasta Pasta Cooker:

No waiting for a big pot of water to boil. Cook pasta to al dente perfection in the microwave! Saves time, energy and water. Use with spaghetti, fettuccini, macaroni, lasagna noodles, rotini and more! Features water level guides on the container which indicate the exact amount of water to add. There are measuring holes in the lid, to precisely determine exact serving sizes therefore eliminating guessing and unused pasta. The lid also functions as a colander for straining.

Conventional stove-top cooking requires approximately 20 minutes to boil water and approximately 10 minutes to cook pasta while stirring, sampling and stirring to determine when it’s done. Fasta Pasta™ cooks pasta in 15 minutes or less, depending on serving size, without cook intervention to stir, sample and stir. Fasta Pasta™ is great for making pasta salads, spaghetti, linguini, lasagna noodles, a variety of vegetables and more. Fast Pasta has also tested non-starch based pastas (soy) and they cook perfectly in Fasta Pasta™. Because the cooker’s environment is “engineered” it’s very precise and perfect for cooking soy, rice, corn, and wheat based pastas.