Friday September 17th: Things I am Loving, Buying, Watching, Reading and Doing Right Now

I thought I'd try something new today so I could show you how I write and research through the day, here's how this works:

This is my week, Monday through Friday and in the interest of over-sharing on the what in the wide world web, here goes...

For every link in blue you see click on it and open it in a new tab on your browser. Mozilla Firefox rocks, it's the blogger's best friend.

Eventually you'll end up with a browser window that looks like mine by the end of the day, (maybe you can also explain why having this many browser tabs open highly disturbs my S.O. for me, too,) hopefully some of this stuff is new to you, interesting to you, or worth sticking around for.

So, I have been sick for like a month straight, and as such, I've spent a great deal of my time staring at my computer screen versus actually, like, you know... doing stuff!

Oh, well, other than getting up at the butt-crack, (pardon my language,) of dawn to get my little one off to school. Hopefully, without arousing the suspicions of Child Protective Services because "That kid ain't wearing any pants!"

No, seriously, don't laugh, this really almost happened today. I had my hand on the door knob and turned around to look at her, her backpack strapped to her back, she hopped from foot to foot, raring to get out the door when I realized she was just wearing tights. "Uh... your pants?"

"Whoops."

Thank good grief I noticed. Another thing I've noticed this week is that A LOT of people have been, or got sick, around the same time as me. They're all better, or seriously on the mend. I am not. I hate you people! No, really, I don't... I love you guys. That's why I am writing this hub, I want to tell everyone what I've learned this last week, this first full week of school, starting with Monday and ending with today, Friday. Because while my daughter is the one going back to school this week, I'm the one who's getting schooled in and beyond the world wide web.

My SO and I have a solid, wonderful gaming group we play with on Mondays. Since we don't have a sitter we take turns playing two weeks on, two weeks off. I really look forward to this every week, if he's going I feel the twinge of jealousy mixed with the sigh of anticipation... four whole hours of uninterrupted "ME," time... w00tw00t. If it's my turn, of course, I'm exhilarated, deeply appreciative and pumped. This week was my turn. On Monday, I felt decent, having recovered appreciably over the weekend. Around two in the afternoon however one of my mates texted to inform me that we weren't meeting this week because he had a stomach bug, thing, nastiness. My first thought was, "Good, I *really* don't want that!," mixed in with a lot of, "Aw, man, that sucks. I hope you're feeling better. Does this mean it's my turn or the SO's turn next week?"

You see, I've this thing... I can't make it three weeks now without getting together with a group of friends and rolling some dice. Being a parent, though, it's hard to find time to get together with other people outside of your family. Heck, getting together with your family is difficult enough! So, I live in Chicago and I'm a Gamer Mom. If you live in Chicago, (city properish,) and are a Gamer Mom or Gamer Dad, too, I want to hear from you! I'm looking to start a group of parents who game, because, well... gaming is awesome! So, you can always get in touch with me through gmail: nawinter77@gmail.com ... twitter: nawinter77 and of course, I'm Nicole A. Winter on Facebook. I'm sure I'm elsewhere, as well, but if you can't contact me through any of these other means something is not right in the world.

Which brings me straight-away into Failbetter Games and their beta version of Echo Bazaar. I don't know what it is, I don't understand how to play it and I sure as heck can't give anyone a clue as to how in the world it works, but I know I like it. This is one nifty idea that can be found on twitter and Facebook. Cool story lines, simplistic playability, Echo Bazaar tells the story of Fallen London, easy to learn, exceedingly difficult to master.  This game has extreme playability and may be highly addictive. ;)  (I know it is totally addictive for me.)

Oh, and also, the hub I wrote about Bella and Tarra, during which I decry being a crazy twitter celebrity chaser? Total FAIL: I was looking at my subscriptions and realized I follow *a lot* more celebrities than actual Joe's and Jane's. I have no idea how this works, either, I'm a complete twitter Luddite. I follow people other people I follow, follow, do you follow? Well, the thing about celebrities is that they tend to follow each other... a lot. Hence the star-struck extravaganza. So, if you're an ordinary Joe or Jane and like what you see from me here on Hub Pages, do me a solid and follow me on twitter. You'll find amazing gems like this:

"This made me lolz: http://abstrusegoose.com/68 tee-hee my baby loves this episode and calls Picard: "Bald Guy" Data: "Plastic Man" and Wil Wheaton the "Little Boy." Dr. Crusher is "Little Boy's Mom." and Worf, well, damn, folks. Worf's just Klingon."

I'll happily follow anyone who follows me and doesn't annoy the living "what all" outta me.

Moving briskly along, how about a little more of that Abstruse Goose?  I'm digging these highly cerebral, humorous, poorly drawn snippets of geek life.  My only complaint?  I wish your pictures on Cafe Press were a little bigger so I could really examine what I'm getting myself into when I feed the goose.

Speaking of the word "goose," we can kindly move right on top of, oh, sorry, I mean, onto Philip DeFranco... of the Philip DeFranco Show. I'm not sure what this says about me, but at this point I'm getting something like eighty percent of my daily news intake from video blogs, twitter and Facebook... am I the only one? Sure, I'll watch a little PBS World News, every day... but I so much prefer my news when it's refined into under ten minutes of "WTF" ... thank-you so much sxephil, (his You Tube moniker,) you've made yourself irreplaceable in my daily viewing habits and now you're going to be off the air until the 27th of September. That's ten whole DAYS! How will I get my daily fix of illumination? Don't forget to check out the DeFranco Gear store, too, guys!

I don't know if it's because I've been taking a truckload of SUDAFED, or what, but my mouth has been crazy dry this week. I've been drinking gallons of water, Smart Water, coconut water, and yummy metromint this week. It's water. And peppermint. Well, that's the one I've been drinking, at least. I wish they'd make a smart water / metro mint hybrid, it'd be the most perfect drink (without alcohol, that is,) in the world.  My only real complaint: the price!  I went out and bought some peppermint extract and tried adding that to my smart water, but it just didn't work.  (I think I used way to much.)  So if anyone knows a good peppermint extract to water ratio, give a girl a heads up, would you?

Have I mentioned to you all how much I love Chicago, lately? The first thing my mom said to me when I moved to the city in '95 was: "But, it's so dirty!" She's right, I love my city, but it's so dirty! People consistently throw their trash on the ground where the wind blows it into these huge piles that get caught in people's fences, the whole place just looks like a trash can. I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but this week my daughter and I have made it a mission of our army of two: armed with plastic grocery bags and rubber gloves we've been cleaning garbage up off the sidewalks and people's yards through our neighborhood. We've collected 20 bags of garbage this week just walking two and from school! It's been totally awesome and we're going to keep it up until the weather turns too cold. My favorite quote from this week was from a friend's grandson who was walking to school in the morning and saw me picking up trash after dropping my daughter off at the bus stop. "Hey, Nicole, you don't have to do community service!" I'm happy I did, though and I'm happy you gave me a laugh while I'm doing it.

Okay, so usually I (rarely) don't blog about what I had to eat... I mean, what is up with that? I know people who specifically won't join Facebook because they don't want to hear about that stuff. I've decided this last week that the best way to deal with being sick, however, is to eat... a lot. I discovered something at my local grocers this last week that I want to give a serious shout-out to: Bear Creek Darn Good Chili. Believe me, I was as skeptical as you are, "Decent Chili from a bag, yeah, right." It really is darn good, though. I doctored it with some Scott Peterson hot polish sausages, and a couple of medium sized shallots. All in all, not only did it take under an hour to prepare / cook, but it made over seven cups of really good chili that we'll be eating for the next few days! Instead of crackers I served the chili with these Pepperidge Farm Pretzel Thins. They double as a spoon!  Oh, and also the SO brought a little of this home... it went so perfectly with the chili we couldn't have planned it better!

Schools all over Chicago this week had their Open House! I'm not mentioning or linking to what school mine goes to, but the school librarian let us take home some books for our little one to digest and bring back / exchange with others and we found a few of these gems laying around on the book exchange shelf. Apparently they've been recently reprinted and I just couldn't help myself, (nor could the SO,) we had to pick one up for Lau to read. Then, as SO and I were talking about them later that night, I felt a sudden flash of inspiration.

"How long do you think it takes the average reader to solve one of these books?," I asked my SO.

"Huh... that's an interesting question."

The upshot of the conversation evolved into us possibly using the Choose Your Own Adventure series as our science project this year, if my daughter will go along with it.  What do you guys think?  It's not entirely scientific, but I've heard of kids doing projects that were almost entirely unscientific.  As long as you can come up with a question you want to answer and a hypothesis the science teachers seem to be pretty cool with whatever.  I'm very eager to see what my daughter thinks of the books.  Seeing them on the school exchange shelf brought back a flood of warm, fuzzy memories from my childhood, that's for sure.

Okay, okay, I know I'm the last person on earth who wants to see this movie, but hasn't yet... and it's playing at the Logan this weekend!  I think the SO and I are finally going to take some time out and take in a show!  Hooray!  So, please, please, please, if you've already seen it, delay your comments until I tell you what I thought about it in the comments section on Monday?  I'll love you forever!  I'm stoked to live so close to a "cheapie" theater!

Did I mention I am sick? I had the *worst* cold, sinus infection thing. Wil Wheaton had one, too at the same time, I totally got a kick out of his twitter posts this last week lamenting about his feeling of general ickiness, not because I'm a mean person or anything, just 'cuz I was going through the same thing.

Dishes. Are. Really. Making. Me. Crazy. Okay, so I haven't found a travel coffee mug I can stand yet, so I went out, (shamefully,) and bought a pack of disposable travel cups this week. (Maybe the guilt of this small act is what has driven me over the edge into becoming "Garbage Lady," "Yeah... I know you kids are calling me that... I see you over there laughing!") Anyways, whatever happened to the days of the double sink guys? I am insisting when we move into a house that it has one of these. I still feel like the lack of garbage in a landfill far outweighs the environmental detriments of wasting water, though. For now, I'll try and guiltily enjoy my disposable travel coffee cups, (they're not made out of Styrofoam, I promise,) and re-use them 'til they fall apart.

Another thing I found unnecessary: My daughter, her head wrapped in a scarf looking like a little Russian peasant girl was helping me pick up trash. She looked adorable. Some jerk started pointing and laughing at her as he walked by. Really? You, a grown man, picking on a little girl? Sad.

Next we have common sense versus the law.  The law says: Bicycle riders must ride in the bike lane on street side going with the flow of traffic while obeying all traffic laws.  Common sense says that children riding their bike should use the sidewalk, it's dangerous out there!  I'm somewhere in the middle.  I got hit by a kid on a bike a couple of weeks ago and he really knocked the wind out of me.  What do you guys think?

Well... I just can't think of anything else to say to you people about this week... and while this hub was all about the things I love, like and occasionally could do without, this hub's also about you guys, too!  I wrote it with the hopes that it'd make you smile, laugh, or learn about something you hadn't heard of before.  Thanks for making it to the end. Maybe I'll do this again next Friday, vote my hub up if you'd like to see more of these.