Today is the day, its AOL JounalLand's 1st Anniversary.  I all ready to head out for the virtual parade with my cyber-noisemakers and cyber-fetti.  I've got on my red, white and blue bobbly headband that jiggles when I move, and I've got my jug of coffee.  Nope, not a cyber-latte, this is the REAL stuff.  The weather's fine, my buddy-alert birds are chirping happily and I'm all set.  Here comes the parade!  Happy Anniversary J-Land.

COLORADO FLAG FOR PARADE OF FLAGS

JOURNALERS IN COLORADO ARE ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH!

DOING THE POTTY DANCE

You know you've got it bad when you go to the computer BEFORE you use the bathroom in the morning!  Once at the computer I decided that I should make a pot of coffee while waiting for the computer to start up and get online with AOL.... So there I am, I've measured the grounds and am filling up the carafe (thats THEIR word, not mine!), and the sound of running water stimulates my own reservoir, and next thing I know I'm standing there in the kitchen doing the potty dance like a kid, knowing that I should shut off the faucet and hurry to the bathroom before there is a flash flood in my kitchen, which is NOT covered by my homeowners insurance... but unwilling... no, UNABLE to stop because my extreme addiction to coffee has full control over my body and I HAVE to get the pot on the maker so I can get a cup of fresh brewed coffee immediately upon my return from the bathroom.  Does the potty dance really help stop the urge?  The answer is NO, but it makes me feel like I'm in motion towards my final destination and I am able to control myself.  Do I put the 'carafe' down and rush to the bathroom?  No, of course not, I have to go and empty it into Bunn Pour-Omatic first.  Once again my sences detect the sound of flowing water and my version of the Potty dance has just picked up the tempo.  And then I key in my password to AOL....  Finally its a mad dash to the toilet and I am proud to announce that I was a good girl and made it in time... I get a potty-point for that one!  And to top things off, my coffee was ready and I was signed on to AOL by the time I returned.  Hows that for timing?

ITS HEREDITARY!

Last night my husband told the kids they were to turn off the computer and the video game system because they were playing too much.  He wanted them to do something a little more social with the family, like watch tv.?  I'm serious folks, that was his suggestion.  "You spend too much time on those games, I want you to do something with the family, like watch tv or something!"  Okay, I was good and made no remark but inside I was thinking 'yeah, thats a great alternative, lets watch tv before our brains turn to mush!'

So we go down and watch one of my favorite movies 'Tremors' (don't roll your eyes at me, thats a great movie!  Nothing like a big people-eatting-prehistoric-subterrainian-alien-wormmonster called a grabboid to bring a family together for a little quality family time!)  At the end of the movie my 2nd oldest boy asked me to go with him upstairs, and there he proudly displayed a high score for a game on the computer.  I don't pay much attention to the score because... wasn't he just told that there were to be no more games played?

"I know, I just kind of fell on the computer and had to play" he said. Okay, thats a good one, he 'fell' on the computer, and I suppose he 'accidently' hit the power button and it was an uncontrollable twitch that clicked the mouse on the game icon.  Okay, I didn't buy it, but I think I'll keep that excuse in my memory banks, just in case I get desperate.

PARADE FLOAT FOR DORNBRAU

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO AOL JOURNALS, AND ALL OF MY FELLOW JOURNALS.  HERE'S TO A WONDERFUL FIRST YEAR AND MANY MORE TO COME!

DORNBRAU: President of the Dust Bunny Club of North America.

           

 

TO ALL OF MY FELLOW BLOG-A-HOLICS, ITS BEEN FUN, ITS BEEN REAL... BLOG ON MY FRIENDS, BLOG ON! 

 

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST, TO ALL OF THE CASHIERS OUT THERE WHO READ MY DIARY OF A MAD CASHIER AND SHAKE THEIR HEADS THINKING... 'BEEN THERE, DONE THAT', REMEMBER THESE WORDS THAT KEEP MY SANITY IN TACT AT WORK...  THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT, EXCEPT WHEN THEY'RE WRONG!

(PLEASE CLICK ON THE GRAPHICS FOR LINKS TO MY JOURNALS)

CREDIT:  THESE WONDERFUL GRAPHICS WERE DESIGNED BY THE WONDERFULLY TALENTED AND GENEROUS SmartyPantzJessi, THANKS JESSIE, YOU'RE AWESOME!  Dorn

AOL JOURNALS ANNIVERSARY

Oh my gosh, the Anniversary is just one week away and I haven't a thing to wear!  And what shall I bring?  A float?  There isn't enough time!  What to do, what to do!?

Okay, maybe I'm a little too new to this to be as caught-up in the celebration as some others, but I still feel like I should be doing something. But what?

Planting a garden is out, my gardening skills, even a cyber garden,suck so I won't even go there.  I've no idea how these cyber-floats work, and I think I dropped the cyber torch a couple of times, I'm not sure, I just saw fire so I sprayed it with my cyber-hose and nothing was left but a cyber-puddle and a wet stick.  How many of them things are there out there anyhow cos I know for a fact I've exstinguished at least 6 (I live in a high-fire-danger area).  Fireworks are out for the same reason.

So what can I do for this 'Cyber-bration'?  I refuse to sit back and do nothing because the fact is I owe a lot to AOL Journals.  For starters I've invested valuable time in my 4 journals and through them have gained many wonderful friends.  Journal-land has given me a much needed break from the stress of the real world although that is not to say that it is not real or genuine.  I take my fellow jouralers very seriously and they are just as real and important in my life as my own friends and family.

Well, the answer is obviously not coming to me today, so I will ponder this over the next few days and hopefully will have an offering for the celebration of a great institution and inspiration.  Til then, blog on my friends.

BLOGGERS WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME

When we set off on vacation I was under the impression that I would be able to access the internet pretty much the whole time we would be gone.  Then, at the last minute my husband announces that we will be camping out on the first part of the trip.  What, no hotel with free highspeed dsl internet access?  I calm myself on the drive down to Arizona.  It will be late by the time we get there, and we haven't made any reservations at the campgrounds.  I play along, pretending to be excited about camping out at the Reservation, but inside I'm keeping track of all the hotels in the area as we near our destination.  We pass the last hotel well before we ever hit the Hopi reservation.  Fortunately (?) reservations are not needed to camp on the designated camp ground/RV park/squatters alley.  We pitch the tent in the middle of nowhere.  There is no highspeed dsl access within 200 miles.

After a tour of the kivas and ancestral homes of my husband's grandparents (not even a regular phone line to be found there), we head off to the Grand Canyon.  Being a federal monument, and a big tourist attraction I know for a fact that there will be no vacantcies at the campgrounds.  I am wrong.  I stare at the public payphones, trying to figure a way to hack into them, but my family wants to sightsee.  There are no phone lines in the Desert View Tower, or at our campsite.  Later, in the tent the kids watch a dvd on the computer.  I tap the keyboard desolately.  I now have the shakes.

The next day its off to California.  I am eager to get there.  I smile at the Hoover Dam, and wave at Las Vegas.  No, we don't need to stop there, lets just get to our final destination... quickly.  I fiddle with the buttons on the dash, pretending to type.  I offer to dial the cell phone, anything just to push buttons and keys.  We finally make it to the in-laws.  Its late, too late to set up the computer.  The next day we go to Santa Ana.  Even before we leave the driveway I am impatient to return.  When we do get home my brother-in-law offers us his computer.  Whats this?  I have entered the wrong password?  IMPOSSIBLE!  I try to set up the laptop, but the in-laws won't let us use their phoneline, and the modem for their dsl is incompatible for our service.  By now I am sweating.

The next morning its off to Disneyland, and more delays.  We don't get the rooms my sister-in-law reserved so there is a big issue about it.  Does it have a phoneline?  Then we'll take it!  When we finally make it to the room I plug the laptop in.  I offered to help my husband with his homework assignment just so I could use the computer.  I quickly unplug the phone and plug the line into the modem, set up the local access and poof, I'm online.  I shoot a quick entry before anyone even knows I'm on. 

Unbeknown to me that would be my only opportunity to get online.  I would go the rest of my vacation cold turkey.  My fingers tap nervously at anything.  I look longingly at the billboards we pass for hotels advertising internet service.  I begin to lose interest in the vacation and daydream of my return home, and to my awaiting computer... my Precioussssssss.  I don't nag when my husband speeds along the interstates, it just means we'll get home that much quicker.

Finally we are home.  I pass by the computer room while bringing our things in from the truck.  Later, over dinner I pretend to enjoy the meal and conversation.  I laugh mechanically at some show on TV, then hurry the kids off to bed.  I insist that my husband not wait for me, I'll be up when I finish the beer I just opened.  Finally they are gone and I bolt into the computer room like a bullet.  I'm online in no time and logged on to AOL.  'Welcome', the Aol dude says, 'You've got mail!'.  I could kiss him, and I would if I wasn't afraid of getting electrocuted.  I read my mail with a big smile on my face.  My fingers tap out passwords and URL's blindly.  I feel all of the tension leaving my body.  I am home.

 

I was home for 3 hours before I turned on the computer.  Don't get me wrong.... I wanted to as soon as I walked in the front door.  It had been 10 days since I had last touched the keyboard and my fingertips itched to caress the keys, but I knew that everyone was watching me, waiting to see how long it would take.  So I sat down and pretended to taste the taco I was eating, pretended to listen to the TV when all I could hear was the ticking of the clock marking wasted seconds that could have been better spent infront of my 17 inch monitor.

But they are asleep now and I am free to log on to visit my old friends.  And I will.... just as soon as I get some sleep myself.  But I just had to stop by and feel my computer once again, and to peek at my blog, to see if anyone has visited while I was gone, to see if anyone had missed me as much as I have missed them.

Ahhhhh, vacations are fun,  but most of all vacations are for reminding you of how wonderful it is to be home. 

Blog on my friends.  Thanks for waiting on me.

FALLEN OFF THE WAGON

Its only 5 days into my vacation and I am ashamed to admit that I could not resist the temptation to hack into the hotel's phone system and get online.  Even more embarassing is the admission that I had tried to get online at my sister-in-law's house but their wiring would not allow access and thus I suffered frustration and learned to use the word 'thus' in a sentence out of sheer boredom and for the lack of something better to do with 24 hours of the day.

So, anyhow, this is a classic example of a stuttering hit and run entry, where a blogger spends the entire entry discussing absolutely nothing, but accomplishing the main purpose of getting a blog fix.  Miss you all, can't wait to get back home to my own computer.

Blog on my friends.  (how I miss typing those four words),

Dorn

VACATION - Updating Journals for Dummies (reprint)

I leave for the family vacation tomorrow with the sunrise.  Unfortunately I have to work today so I will be very busy once I get off.  In anticipation of not being able to get my blog-fix again before I leave, I will leave you will this, probably one of my favorite blog entry.  For those who read it previously on my other journal, I apologize for the repetition. 

I am making some upgrades to my journal.  These are inter-active upgrades so you will have to follow the instructions I give to benefit from the application.  First of all, in order to spruce up my journal, kind of give it a flashy facelift with the little blinkies that are so popular with the other journals, I am adding some of my own.  Here is where the 'inter-active' part comes in.  When ever you see a little asterik, like this  *  , just blink your eyes several times in succession.  The more you blink, the faster the blinkie!  Try it now:

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

If you did it properly you should have seen a blinking row of twinkly stars.  Got it?  Good.  Now I'll add some color.... and.... blink! blink! blink!

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Next I will add some background music.  Scroll back up to *the top of the message.  Under the heading there should be a song title * and the artist that performs it.  In this case it is 'How Do You Like Me Now' by Toby Keith.  Go to AOL Music on the toolbar and click on it.  Find the country section and select TobyKeith, and then the song title.  Crank it up and continue reading the message.  *       *

Through the marvels of modern technology I am now able to provide you with a unique interactive online  * experience.  I *hope you have enjoyed your visit here at my journal.  To my new found friends, thank you  for the support and encouragement you * have given me.  To those who made fun of my name, or made insinuations as to whether or not I have* a life, all I can say is....   (crank up the chorus now)   "How Do You Like Me Now?!"  *

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *