Community Chest

Today’s prompt is “a person who lifts you up” — a person. Impossible.

Certainly I could talk about JMP all day. It just takes a silly photo or an update from his mom to make my day. But it’s also TW who’s always been able to lift me with a tree joke or a mint on my pillow or topping off my coffee at just the right moment.

Or my kids, who even when I’m sure they’re trying to see which one of them can make me nuts the fastest, are also the ones who make my day every single day. Or my parents, who always seem to call me or text me on the very same day (still).

Or the people I work with who can make me laugh when there’s really not much to laugh about. Or the bloggers I’ve met and those I’ve never met who make my life better with their words and their photos and their desire to make connections and share their lives with me (with all of us.)

One person who lifts me up — impossible. I’m grateful for all of you.

I dunno why there aren’t more posts about Battery Safety Awareness Month — it would make about as much sense as all of the posts about breast cancer awareness because yo, folks — we are aware!

I mean seriously. Batteries can be dangerous if you let kids or animals eat them. Or if you try to charge non-rechargeable batteries (who does that, anyway?) Or if you try to dismantle a battery. (do people do this? what happens when you dismantle a battery? Can someone who has tried it, and lived, tell me what happens?)

Apparently you should also not mix brand name batteries with non-brand name batteries — I don’t really know why that might be but that’s the advice and if it’s on a battery safety list of things to not do, I guess someone has done it and had bad things happen to them. I’m kind of worried that something bad is going to happen to us because I guran-damn-tee you that we’ve got some stuff here with mixed brand batteries in it. (Are there people who only have one brand of battery in their house?)

You should also always replace all of the batteries in a thingy at the same time, which I guess I generally do. My problem here is that I have a bin of loose batteries and I suspect some are fresher than others which maybe would be the same thing as only replacing one of three? I dunno but it’s not safe and I’m tempted to throw away all of my batteries and start fresh because unfresh batteries are dangrous.

I’m even more concerned about the pictures of hybrids on fire, possibly due to battery issues (and apparently October’s Battery Safety Month is mostly focused on automobile batteries but it’s also Fire Prevention Month and battery fires are included in the things you should be aware of when you think of Fire Prevention. Though I really think we should prevent fires every month but that’s just me, maybe?) Have y’all seen the photos of the Tesla on fire? Or the Volt on fire? That’s troubling. If there are PRIUS on fire photos, due to battery problems, could you not share them with me? Thanks. I appreciate that. I’ve got enough to worry about with the loose batteries in my laptop bag possibly coming in contact with each other and setting my favorite BlogHer shwag laptop bag on fire. That thought is going to keep me awake all night. Or cause me to go empty out all of the loose batteries in my laptop bag and… hell… NOT throw them in the bin full of loose batteries in the closet.

Hell. I’m gonna have battery operated nightmares aren’t I?

I’ve got a bit of an addiction to surfing real estate listings on Zillow.

About six months ago, I set up some saved searches on my Zillow iPhone app for places I thought we might consider living when we move away from here. I added searches for Beaufort, SC, Savannah, Ga, Brunswick, Ga, St Marys, Ga, Fernandina Beach, Fl. Then, I added Charleston, SC (never gonna happen) and Gainesville, Fl last month.

My filters include:
– $200,000 or less
– House, not condo
– 2 br or more
– 2 baths or more

I often find myself puzzling over the photos included in these listings and often hand the phone to TW while chuckling. There’s a lot of “who thought that was a good idea” and “OMG what is ON THE BED?” and “who are the people who live in this house???” and “OMG those pictures are so not helpful.”

Now that I’ve seen the Terrible Real Estate Agent Photos tumbler, I know, it could be worse.

Which also reminded me that I sometimes wish agents would take photos of things I can’t filter for… things like doggy doors. Do any of these houses already have one installed? That could be the thing that pushes me into choosing THAT house. If you’ve got one, photograph it! Is the yard fenced? I’m always surprised that so few listings actually mention the fencing. Are there a lot of squirrels? I’d rather have trees but few squirrels, thanks. Are the neighbors asshats? If they aren’t, it would be nice if you’d say so because I am sick to death of bad neighbors.

I’ve pretty much done nothing all day but watch livestreaming news from Boston.

And this makes me kind of miss the good ole days when we got news a few times a day with occasional breaking news coming in with an update but then you were taken right back to regular programming.

Breaking news coverage… stops being breaking news coverage when you have absolutely nothing to report and nobody to talk to who knows anything. And, that’s pretty much what the coverage was for most of the darn day.

Didn’t keep me from being fascinated by it though, did it?

Gah.

Chris Carfi works for Swipp. Chris Carfi is Lisa Stone’s partner, and a wickedly smart, super-duper, all round awesome guy. Neither of them asked me to blog about Swipp or even asked me to try Swipp. This is all me…

If you don’t know what Swipp is, you should read Virginia’s post: Swipp Your Way to Social Intelligence and get used to seeing my swipps appear in your Facebook or Twitter streams if we’re friends/you follow me. I’m kind of addicted to swipping stuff. I even swipped what I’m having for dinner tonight. Heh. It’s a social media tool, telling people what yummy things you’re eating is a must. 😉

Besides having fun coming up with stuff to swipp and swipping stuff others have swipped, I’ve learned some stuff about myself.

I don’t like negative swipping. I don’t mind it when others do it but it takes a lot for me to slide that little slider down into the negative range. I’m doing it but I’m not really loving doing it, in most cases.

I had no problem swipping a -5 for Rand Paul a minute ago. I am passionate in my dislike of him. But most other things, I don’t feel so strongly passionate in my dislike that I want to push that slider. I’d much rather move along and find something I like, even if I only like that something a little.

Dunkin’ Donuts, for instance. I’m not a fan. Someone else swipped it with a +5 and I had to really force myself to swipp it down. It’s just not ME to rank and rate that way. I’m still doing it, as a way to explore my own ambivalence about the negative swipp, but I suspect it won’t be long ’til I stop negative swipping except in the most extreme of cases, (soup, for instance. I HATE soup and will have no problem swipping that down if I ever see it in the stream.)

I’m also surprised by just how much fun it is to be the PRIME swipper of a topic — particularly a topic that I was really interested in or really felt strongly about.

What I’m not surprised by is that I find it interesting to see what other people are swipping — and their feelings about what they’ve swipped. TW asked my why I like this thing — and that’s it. It’s not just that I’m having fun sharing my feelings about stuff, it’s that I really like seeing what other people think and feel about everything under the sun. It’s interesting.