Velveteen Mind

Who Dat?

More to come tomorrow.  Exhausted tonight. 

I promise I'm not dragging this out, but if I try to post everything right now,  you'll fall asleep, too, only from the dullards.  Tomorrow.  Seriously.

Update:  BOSSY is the new Marlon Brando or And then BOSSY Yelled "Stella!" (the one where I meet BOSSY)

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Don't BOSS Me

Hey, all you BOSSY readers!
I see you wondering who BOSSY's stalker is.

That would be me.

Come back later tonight for lots of photos of the back of BOSSY'S neck.

A lot like this one that I would insert here if Typepad would get back online and let me insert any photos.

Like the one of BOSSY's shoulder that I would insert right here.

And, oh yeah, the one of BOSSY looking gorgeous in Cafe Du Monde.  You might have to email Typepad for that one.  They may have taken BOSSY seriously and now won't let me upload anything with the word "bossy" in the file.

In the meantime, here is your official
BOSSY Stalking Timeline a la Velveteen Mind:

1st:  BOSSY is the new Dooce
2nd:  my Gulf Coast BOSSY bumper sticker tour w/ Oh, the Joys!
3rd:  BOSSY is the new Napoleon

Update:  BOSSY is the new Marlon Brando or And then BOSSY Yelled "Stella!" (the one where I meet BOSSY)

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Blooming Marvelous Easter 2008

Ooh, where ever did you come up with such a cute idea for Easter cupcakes, Megan?
*** Why, from my Blooming Marvelous ditto sister, Annie!

I have a feeling they don't look anything like what Annie had described, but my family utterly adored them.  A new Easter staple, I am quite confident. 

Thank you to everyone who sent in Easter cupcake recipes, however, I probably should have mentioned that anything requiring more than, say, three ingredients and four steps is too much for this Domestic Dumb Bunny.  This is why Annie's recipe was spectacular:  3 ingredients and 4 steps!  She is a genius and she knows me very well.

Now, on with the rest of our quick illustrated guide to my family's Easter...

Goose says, "What?  You got a problem with my egg dipping by hand?"
Megan thinking, "Wowza!  My kid is the next Jackson Pollock!"
*** Pants doesn't do normal poses.  Crazy only, thank you.
And notice not a drop of egg dye on those 3 year old fingers.
I live the perfect illustration of the Birth Order Theory.
*** Holy Hidden Eggs, Batman!
Pants takes Easter egg hunting seriously.
*** Hey!  There ain't no candy in this egg!  What am I supposed to do with this?
Goose takes Easter egg hunting for the crock it really is.
***

Finally, a glimpse into our family on Easter night, on the jagged edge of the sugar high comedown:

Listen closely and you can hear my dad say, "You wanna see mine--  I'm gonna crazy myself into the bar and watch some Westerns."  Classic.  And, yes, my folks have a full bar in their house.  Welcome to a Mississippi Easter.

Hope you had a happy Easter, ya'll!

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Let Me Back Into The Matrix

A little over a year ago, I took the blue pill.  The one that places you inside the Matrix.  The Matrix that is the blogosphere, that is.

A little over four months ago, I took the red pill.  The one that removes you, albeit painfully, from the Matrix.  The one that plants you in the real world.

Now I'm ready to take the blue pill again.  But will you let me back into the Matrix?

~~~

It is amazing how much I missed while I was out of the Matrix.

It is disconcerting how little I missed while I was out of the Matrix.

Wading through hundreds of blog posts, it is clear that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Conversations turn into friendships.  Slights turn into tantrums.  Radicals are born and movements are started.  Resolves fizzle as the shine of new blog buttons begin to dull.  Awards are doled out and flashes appear in the pan.  All that glitters...

And yet nuggets of genuine gold are there.  Scratch them.  See for yourself.  There is value in this Matrix that we have created.  You just have to know where to look.

So I took the blue pill.

Now let me back into the damn Matrix.

~~~

My progress so far...

Apparently BOSSY really did email me about her Excellent Road Trip  while I was, uh, not reading my email.  Thanks for supporting my bludgeoning of her for "overlooking" me anyway.  I should probably read my email from her before I start yelling at her next time.  Nevertheless, I will be meeting up with BOSSY at her stop in New Orleans and I couldn't be more excited to have her in my neighborhood.

>>>

TopBlogMag is not dead after all.  It was just in a coma.  Unfortunately, it has woken up from its coma with amnesia, not being able to even remember its name.  Therefore, I have renamed it and given it an all-new identity that suits my purposes as its new publisher and editor:

Blog Nosh Magazine!

After consulting with all of TopBlogMag's excellent writers, the new reincarnation will be a magazine featuring republished posts from your blog's old archives. 

You know those really great posts you wrote before anyone was reading your blog?  The ones you try to pimp out in your sidebar's "Dear God, Please Read These Before You Judge Me for Writing About My New Haircut 4 Days in a Row!" section?  Yeah, those.

If it has fallen off of you r front page and you love it, then we will be noshing on it!

*With your permission, of course.*

I'll be calling for editors soon to start compiling content for lots of subcategories.  While TopBlogMag always had male writers, the majority of the bloggers seemed to come from mommyblogs.  Time to ditch our niche and help promote and discover  some solid content not originating from the uterus.

Not that I don't love mommybloggers.  ;)

*By the way, we will still have some "themed writing" challenges, but it won't be the entire content model now.

Want to get your name in early as a writer, contributor, and/or editor?  email me and I'll add you to the Blog Nosh Magazine mailing list for updates and cries for help about the progress of the magazine's restructuring and relaunch.

>>>

In this same vein, one of my favorite new discoveries post-hiatus is Alltop.com.  Granted, I sort of hover around the moms.alltop.com section, but when I do venture out, I am always richly rewarded.   Alltop.com is an excellent source to break out of your "Internet stagnation."  Taken from their "about" page:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections ... into individual Alltop sites based on topics ... At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — we call this “single-page aggregation.”

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet... The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

Precisely.  As such, Alltop has become an excellent source for knowing which blogs' archives I might like to dig through to find old content that they might like republished and re-promoted for Blog Nosh Magazine.  Particularly blogs in niches that I don't generally read.  A gold mine, indeed.  Although they only display the most recent headlines and preview the first paragraphs* from these blogs' posts, it's usually enough to know if I want to click through or not.

*Good reminder to all of us:  open strong and headline with intrigue!
 

Love it.

>>>

Finally, the worst of my renewed immersion in the Matrix has been twitter.  When I took the red pill and stepped away from the computer, I was a so-so fan of twitter.  Mostly, I found that people used it to promote their blog posts and maybe talk about what they were eating.  No real conversations within the circle of twitters that I followed.

At the suggestion of MammaLoves, however, I decided to give twitter another go.  Apparently, Mamma is a drug pusher.   

May I suggest that if any of you decide to take a hiatus from blogging (highly recommended, mind you), twitter may be the fastest track back online.  Within days of logging back on, I have found at least a dozen new blogs that I adore and gained twice as many lovely "followers" as I had even last week. 

Talk about getting lost in the Matrix.  Get yourself an account or start using that dusty old one you already have and start following me.  You'll be amazed at who you'll meet, who you'll start reading, and who will start reading you.

>>>

>>>

>>>

Now it's your turn.  Tell me, what else did I miss while I was away?   Pop a blue pill and draw me further into your Matrix.

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Good Friday. Pure. Home.

You know how we didn't have a computer for four months, more or less?

That also meant no internet and no television.  We were in a self-imposed technological dark age.

That's how I missed this:

I don't care how hard-hearted you are, that is a beautiful thing.

And I don't care how many times you've seen it, watch it again.  For me.

Because it's a Good Friday.

~~~

I'm not a YouTube kind of girl, but I am loving watching the nominees for the YouTube Video Awards this morning.  Watch all of the nominees and then check out the winners. 

~~~

Speaking of Good Friday, I got into this YouTube-watching-timesuck because I was looking for recipes for Easter cupcakes and deviled eggs.  I have a new cake plate and carnival glass deviled egg dish I want to use, so the eats has got to be pretty.

Aah.  That dish is my grandmother.

I want to make something like this:

 

But I have a feeling that the best I'll be able to pull off will be something like this:

 

 

Any suggestions for Easter cupcakes?
What about your mama's deviled egg recipe?

Our first Easter in our new home, so it's time to warm this place up with some new family traditions.

What are your family Easter traditions?
Help me make this house a home...

 

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