A lot has changed since I last wrote here.
I got married!
I’m this close to being getting my BA.
We got a puppy!
The vet says he is either part Mastiff or Saint Bernard. In case you don’t know, those are both considered “giant breed” dogs. She said, “he’s going to be huge.” So this will be fun.
In addition to these changes, changes will be happening here too. I’m going to try to focus more on my original goal for this site, which is to write positive posts about things that make me feel uplifted (keep me from sinking) in hopes that they will help someone (even if it is just one person) who reads it. Among these posts, which will probably vary from life things, to things in the news, to thoughts on scripture—like I’ve done on some of my previous sites—I will be writing more reviews. Right now I think the reviews will mostly be books that I enjoy and/or have a good message, but there may be an occasional CD or movie review as well.
If you have anything you would like to see reviewed here, let me know by emailing Reese@Ohbuoyancy.net
That’s all for now.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that I am of another time and place; I should have been born in England in the 17th century.
I have a preference and tendency to use (without thinking about it) Old English. I use “dreamt,” not “dreamed;” I think the word color should have a “u” in it and many other things along these lines. I’ve always preferred British punctuation, especially when it comes to quotations. In American English, punctuation marks always go inside the quotation marks at the end of a sentence, no exception. The English way makes so much more sense; for example, with a question mark, if the question is what is in quotes then the mark is inside the quotation marks, but if the question is the whole sentence, not just what it is being quoted, the question mark is outside of the end quotation mark (How many times did I say “quotation”? Three. Did I ever say “quotation?” No.)
Just now, I was reading some 17th century literature and nearly every noun has its first letter capitalized (yes, I used a z and not an s, but trust me, it was not without hesitation). If you check my work from elementary school (not that you could do that, that would be weird) you will see that I did this more often than not.
Finally, when I was in elementary school we were still taught to use the Oxford comma. For those of you out of the punctuation nerds loop, this is the comma before “and” in: Red, white,(this guy to the left here) and blue. We’ve driven the Oxford comma into non-existence, but he’s there for a reason and I refuse to give him up!
I’ve actually been meaning to write about the water crisis for several months, but have put it off repeatedly. Today I found this video on Virb°, it’s a public service announcement from Charity:Water, that puts everyday Americans in the situation (to an extent, that is) that many in Africa face daily; it pushed me to make this Multimedia Monday’s post on water. (If you’re viewing this post in a feed reader, click over to see the video.)
Other videos, photos, and media on the Charity:Water website are worth your time as well.
One of the things that I wanted to post when I originally decided to post about the water crisis was this photo essay from TIME, which includes photographs from the book Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World. Right now you can download the book for free, in pdf form, from that Amazon page. Though, if you can afford to, you can purchase the book from Charity:Water and $70 of the purchase goes to the charity.
While Charity:Water is a great organization, I know more, and feel more strongly about giving to Blood:Water Mission (yes, the charity started by members of Jars of Clay). Blood:Water exists to provide sustainable water sources in Africa by building wells with emphasis on reducing the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Check out the site for information on what they’ve already done, what they’re doing now, and how you can help.
Watch this, then go to WheretheHellisMatt.com for more videos and to read the story behind them. (I must thank Joshua Longbrake for bringing Matt back to my attention.)
I would love to do something like this. Come to think of it, I would do pretty much anything involving travel if someone paid my expenses. Anyone need an experienced writer to travel the world writing, photographing, and videographing her experiences?
Now the song this makes me think of, Los Campesinos – You! Me! Dancing
There’s no way I could have a “dancing” post without mentioning Brandtson’s “Nobody Dances Anymore,” which spawned many fan-created videos.
Yesterday I made a trip downtown to meet with Dustin Bryson and talk about writing for PCityLIVE. PCityLIVE is a site that just launched this week, it combines a social network with an online magazine. I would compare it to Virb° before I would compare it to myspace, but still with more magazine to it.
I think it’s going to be really awesome. Dustin told me about his ideas for the site and some things they’re doing. He talked about how we can see someone all the time and think they’re a pretty cool person and that we’d like to build a friendship with them but we don’t take the step to approach them and get to know them better. PCitylive hopes to help build relationships in our community, let us get to know people with the help of the internet.
While Panama City is still a fairly small city, I think most residents would agree with me in saying we don’t have the sense of community that many larger cities do have. PCitylive should at least be a step in the right direction, a step that will foster that community feel and experience.
