I Thought I Had Lost This Blog

 A few years ago, I tried to access this blog and I couldn't do it. I didn't know what happened to my password or something, and felt like I would have to abandon it, to see it lost to time. I felt like it hadn't been the same since I had to move it from my own personal webpage to be hosted on Blogger, since I lost all of the images and comments anyway. 

The last thing I had done anything on it is a draft of my youngest son's birth story, which I never published. I think it will stay in draft from, and I will be removing my other kid's birth stories off of here as well, because they are my kids and I don't feel like I need to put so much personal information about them on the internet. The information is for me and them, it shouldn't be privy to strangers.

But anyway, I do have access to this blog, and I may seek to revive it again, though I'm not sure to what degree I want to go on here. My life has taken a turn that has not allowed me to focus so much time to writing in this manner, though I often do have a strong desire to share my thoughts and I don't feel comfortable on Facebook to go political. 

Yes, I still follow politics and I am still quite opinionated. At one time this blog showed enormous promise, who knows, perhaps I can revive it again? 

Life After Childbirth

Where do I begin? I think I'm starting to finally feel the need to get out do things, and having an infant that you have to lug around everywhere you go does put a damper on your style. I felt pretty independent and free before becoming a mother and now, not so much, but still, at the same time, I do love my daughter and I love being a mom.

One of the strange things about the whole event, I felt through most of my twenties I couldn't figure out what I wanted to be and now I know. I'm going to school part time, my bachelor's degree is actually accessable for the first time in, well, ever! Going into education and teaching, which I just keep going back too, my other educational endeavours were just going nowhere but now I feel like i might just get something accomplished. It feels good.

Animalwise, I had three chickens and twelve chicks april of last year, every one of those chickens is deceased. It actually makes me kind of sad to think about that I lost all of my chickens, because you grow rather fond of them. I started with fifteen chicks now, though one of those chicks didn't make it. A little adaptation to my chicken coop should keep the predators out. Also we have a haveahart trap to catch anything that might want to munch on chicken flesh. Already got a raccoon with it, and a friend is making a coonskin cap out of its carcus. I love the rural life though. Getting to and from town however, not so much. I also had one of my beloved barn cats disappear. This made me a little sad, so I adopted a couple 'feral' cats that are sweet as can be to replace him.  It's kind of sad that I have to consider my barn cats expendable, because we do have a coyote issue.  The next task, getting my dog an invisible fence so she can help keep the pests away, and hopefully add to the lifespan of my other animals. 

I'm down to two horses, one being Breezy and the other being a pony that is a work in progress.  It should be fun putting miles on him, but I don't know if I'm going to keep  him, otherwise I might try to trade him for a pony that is a little more tame.  He's got some spunk, and it looks like it will be a while before my daughter can use him. 

Working out is a work in progress. We had sun a few weeks ago and I went running for the first time in, well, over a year. I am out of shape. We also started P90X and lasted a whole two weeks.   But weather has been very bipolar, yesterday was glorious son, today is wet and snow.  Bleh.  Husband's work schedule and my life being dictated by an infant has a lot to do with that. That also goes for having time to clean and upkeep house. Not to mention blogging. You mean I have a blog that at one time was semi-successful? Whodathunkit?

There is often issues I want to comment on, but it's just getting to a point where I wonder what my priorities are, and right now, my priorities belong to my daughter.  Having only one child and living out in the boonies makes doing anything kind of difficult, but we'll manage I think.  Just keep an eye on the blog, I facebook much more and when i do blog, I tend to comment on my facebook about it.

Blogging Ills

So, what have I been up to for the last month or so?

Yes, I know, I haven't blogged in a while, and if you're still reading this, it's probably because you follow my feed. Well, I have been up to a lot. And really, I've been up to a whole lot of nothing.

My husband, who is in the Air Force, is away at school at present, he comes back this week and it will be nice to have him back. While he was gone, I had all sorts of things planned out on what I would do. This included building a chicken coop for my twelve chicks I bought, planting a garden, organizing my studio space, getting my website up to date and republished, working on my webcomic that has been largely neglected, fine tuning my zombie plan, Yoga, and a host of other little odds and ends.

What did I end up accomplishing? Well, I did a whole lot of writing, and napping. I nap almost every day. What can I say, my energy levels are bleh. But I do have a valid excuse, you see.

Back in March, I kind of suspected something was up, though it was still quite early. Being newly wed and having few distractions other then the interwebs kind of leads to other things. However, seeing how last year went when I spilled the news after a week of knowing, this time I held onto it for a little bit longer. My horse friends found out quite soon, seeing as I wasn't doing much riding, but i waited until the eight week mark to tell the family.

Yep, pregnant again. I'm at fifteen weeks today, due for an early birthday baby in November. So yeah, when i do blog, it might be mommy related. I just hope I'm not as annoying as some moms I have seen.

So far everything is going smoothly, except for the come and go energy levels. seriously.

Style Blogging!!?!

Oh My GOSH, you guys, I know you have been wanting to hear from me and everything and I've been horribly neglecting my poor blog but I have figured out what I'm going to blog about!

Fashion!  Because I am the Fashion Queen of Fashion and all of the cool house wife bloggers are doing it so I think it's time I fell into sync with what is hip in the blogging world.  And holy cow it's going to be EPIC!!!

(please note there is not an ounce of sarcasm in the tone of this entire post)

A Note About Commenting

I like to encourage people to comment on my blog, whether they disagree with me or not, because it makes me feel good that somebody at least cares enough about what I have to say to leave a short message to me about it.



That said, PLEASE don't choose the option of Anonymous when commenting on my blog. It is annoying. Call yourself something, ANYTHING but Anonymous. You can choose the name/url option and put anything there that you want, you don't even have to put in a URL. Because I like to encourage commenting and don't want people to feel pressured into having to register for something to leave a comment. Unfortunately, allowing that option also allows for people to choose to click Anonymous. Please do me a favor and just use the Basic Name Option. If people keep choosing to use Anonymous, I'll just force everyone to register.

Bleh!

Relaunched Ramblings

I really like to blog. I miss it. I'm going to try to get back into it.

The big difference is now I have to do blogging through Blogspot (though I'm going to try to direct it through my website so at least its on my domain, hmm).

So anyway, as you can see, the blog looks a wee bit different. I'm still in the process of updating my blog links and appearance and all of that fun stuff, so this will be a work in progress.

That being said, what else has changed about the blog? Actually, not much in regard to content, I'm still going to write about whatever I want to write about, the key difference being that I'm older and a bit more mature then my earlier blogs, and hopefully not so narcissistic. However, this is an opinion blog and I pretty much write about whatever I want to write about.

The exception is military matters. Unless it's related to current events or what not, I probably won't write much about my life in the military, because it's a headache producer and I don't want to deal with the drama. The other exception is going into a lot of detailed with my personal life, being that I'm married now. I might post a little bit about married life and all, but posting about my significant other is going to be minimal. I don't really see this as being a mommy blog or one of those.

What else has changed? The obvious is the comments, I've just changed to Blogger's default comments, which sucks because I lost all of the comments from my previous blog, which are actually archived on my website and direct linked there. Up until May, this blog is actually mirrored on my site, just getting to those posts is a hassle. Some of the more popular blog posts I might actually take the comments off of, but overall, everything is starting off from scratch.

I also added advertisements, because I decided to sell out, but not only that, because being a lowly house wife these days, I'm trying to figure out ways to make money. I had a successful blog at one point, maybe I'll get it again? Maybe not, but whatever, why not try to make a little bit of an income with it? Doesn't hurt to try, does it? Will it be successful or not, only time will tell. But I love blogging enough, I had some kind of early freakish success with it at one time, that I thought I should do something to profit off of it somewhat, even if it's only a few bucks a month.

Might as well get paid doing something I love.

So that's about it. Hopefully everything runs smoothly with the transition and I can get the blog appearance to grow on me.

Blogging and Tweeting

So apparently I can't stay away from Blogging. but don't get to excited, I don't really foresee this as a comeback persay, but more of a 'whenever I feel like I have something to say, I might as well out and say it.' Sometimes I really want to speak my mind on an issue, like the previous post, and this is the best forum for me to say it. I also made some slight modifications to my blog, including adding my twitter feed, which really is nothing special since I don't tweet that much, but every so often I feel like I need to say something, and it makes it doubly handy when I can tweet from my phone.

As for the header, you might be asking why I changed it. Well, because the pictures were old and I felt I need to update them, but I didn't want to stare at those forever and so I just came up with something quick to throw up there until I get a moment to really update my blog. It needs a face lift. In fact, the whole site could use a face lift.

Meanwhile, talk on the employment front will remain minimal. More likely then anything else, I'll talk about current events and figure out hwo to update my blog from my cell phone. I got a new Gphone through T-mobile, the Mytouch which is pretty sweet, but I'm still working out the fine tunings of it.

If anything, more often then not, I'll be tweeting.

Why does twitter use such an annoyingly cutesy phrase to describe updating to it? And why is it sickeningly cute how its set up anyway? I'm not sure, but I don't use it that much so whatever.

Blogs and Ranting

So I started blogging again thinking I could talk about whatever was going on, to discover that right now, I have very little to talk about that isn't involved with what I do for work right now. And even if I had complete freedom to blog about what I do for work, I have discovered that I really have lost the interest in blogging. It's something I have largely outgrown since I started way back in 2001ish, and yes, it's crazy to think I've been blogging off and on since then.

But the reasons I blog now are different then when I blogged when I first started. This was primarily a ranting form for me, that's how I got the load off my chest, and what was bothering me at the time, I knew I could post some details of what was going on and people in the world, strangers could freakin' read what I wrote. For some reason, that was very therapeutic at the time. The problem is, well, in my job and my position, ranting is very inappropriate for me. I am in no position to rant about day to day life. This is no longer an outlet like it had been.

Also, even if I talked opinions like politics and such, which is the direction I originally wanted to go when my blog started taking off, that is another topic that I largely have to avoid. Back before the current election, though I was critical of some of his policies, by and large I still supported President Bush. I have very little support for President Obama's policies, but due to his position, I need to respect his title and his stances on certain issues I disagree with, especially related to the military. I have a lot of frustrations to vent towards the government right now, however I need to remain mum on that front as well. Politics are somewhat of a dead issue for me right now. So even if I turned completely in that direction and my opinions on such things, and left my personal life completely alone, there is really nowhere I can go with the topic without going into a highly critical nature of the current administration.

So in respect to that position, and lack of time otherwise for even maintaining this thing, I'm going into a somewhat of a hiatus mode once more. I have downgraded the main page to one post because I hate seeing posts from three months ago just sitting there, and it keeps a neater appearance.

That is all. Ciao for now.

My Take on Dijongate

Yay, four day pass! And then its back to the grind again.

For those of you who aren't familiar with what 'Dijongate' is, both Instapundit and Hotair linked to this post.

Basically it was a spoof. See, Barack Obama and Joe Biden went to Arlington VA and had a hell burger, which was apparently a historic moment because everything involving Barack Obama is historic. MSNBC was there and covered their little male bonding experience when they were craving a burger.

That's all fine and all, but well, is it newsworthy? Who cares that Barack Obama decided to go get a burger, it's not that big of a deal.

So Legal Insurrection made a joke about it. Because you see, this is secretly a ploy by Barack Obama to come across as an every man, but in reality, he ordered his hamburger with Dijon Mustard, showing that he is an elitist! But MSNBC left out that detail when they reported it, showing that they are covering up that Barack Obama liked Dijon Mustard. And that in itself is the scandal!

Dude, it's a joke on the idiocy of the adoring Mainstream Media and their fawning press coverage of Barack Obama. WHO CARES THAT HE WENT OUT AND GOT A BURGER??? This is non-news, just a little story to make Obama look like a regular 'joe'. There is nothing newsworthy about this story except for those who worship Obama and want to see him every waking hour of their pitiful lives. Do we really care that Obama likes Dijon Mustard?

But apparently, the leftwing blogs (hence forth known as the nutroots) are screaming foul over this story which apparently got the blogger a bit of attention.

Apparently they didn't grasp the concept that this was a joke and a non issue.

Reading up on that story and how people get all up and antsy over any criticism of Obama has proven interesting. Take for instance, the comments left in THIS Post over at Huffington Post (a Liberal haven in the blogosphere). These people have such a blind adoration to the president that they can't find anything remotely funny about him.

NOTICE:

To all of you concerned, and I guess that is anyone who bothers to read this thing.

I will be removing my blog here shortly. It may be a temporary thing, but in the scheme of internet speak, you might as well call it permanent. Yep, this blog is going on a hiatus, the archives and everything will be going on with it.

Please don't get some crazy idea that I was forced to shut down my blog. I wasn't. I've been kind of thinking this over in my head for some time that when it comes to this blog and my career in the military, this blog has been quite a thorn in my side. The easiest way to deal with this problem is to remove the thorn. And I don't need this blog for the reasons I started it in the first place. I don't use it for the same purposes, and when you start to get to the level that I am, it becomes more of a curse then a blessing.

So I'm going to take the whole thing down for a while. In about a year or so, if I feel the need to blog again, maybe I'll resurrect it from the dead. Or maybe I'll start from scratch. Or maybe I'll just let it rest in peace. Who knows? A lot can change in a year or two.

Thanks for the comments and the readership. It has been greatly appreciated. Even if 2004 was a complete fluke and I probably shouldn't have this level of readership to begin with.

Black and White on Grey Matters

Listen to this guy, he is AWESOME!

He's got about six videos up so far. Be warned, he can get vulgar at times, but the guy has common sense, tells it like it is.

Check out this guy's other videos





Note - the videos are a little on the long side, this one is thirty minutes, but they are well worth the watch.

Hat tip: Baldilocks

I Made Dinner the Other Night

I did something the other night that is totally blogworthy of somebody's personal blog and all of my blogginess!

I cooked Dinner! And it didn't involve putting a tv dinner into the microwave! And what's more, believe it or not, thought it looks like it belongs in a James Lileks Book, it was actually EDIBLE!



I have potential to be domesticated afterall! I can rely on something other then Microwaveable Burritoes, Top Roman and Can's of Chicken Noodle Soup! I can cook Hamburger Helper!



Yes, I am so proud. And yes, that wallpaper has got to go. . .

Disclaimers

So, with all this crap hitting the fan in Kosovo, I've been noticing a bit more spikeage in my blog readership, mostly from people who are apparently googling info about Kosovo and finding my blog. A lot of them seem to think that I don't know what I'm talking about, but then again they are looking at a blog post that is two and a half years old. Apparently some people over there don't think I know what I'm talking about.

Well, one, this post is two and a half years old, I'm not a journalist, I'm a freakin' blogger, and my blog is about my observations and what I think. Sometimes I tell it like it is but I don't have the full story. I certainly don't have the full story here. And I don't know much of anything now since I've been out of the country since January 2006. I left Kosovo two years ago.

Meanwhile, because I had a spammer, I had to go delete that comment out of my comment bar and ran into somebody who basically ripped me a new one for giving out sensitive information in regards to my job while I was over there. Er, hello? I'm a Preventive Medicine Specialist, other then releasing numbers and telling people there is a huge outbreak of Hepatitus C, there is nothing remotely classified about my job. When I was in Kosovo, on a day to day basis, I was bored out of my mind because everything ran smoothly and there was really nothing to do. My job was keeping our soldiers healthy, and if you look up PM on the internet, it will tell you the same thing. I took pictures, yes, but I didn't show anything in government buildings and never talked about upcoming missions, rather discussed them in retrospect after they had passed. And a lot of the missions, like the Medcaps and Vetcaps, were missions that were advertised to the people of Kosovo because it was a mission to go out and win the hearts and minds of people. They want you to talk about that stuff.

Besides, I'm not much of a milblogger if you haven't noticed. Now my job deals with Basic Combat Training and there is nothing classified about that. Not that I'll post much pictures anyway.

Want to hear my life? I'm going to Ft Knox this summer to train soldiers for the Summer Surge, because most people go to Basic Training in the Summer because that's when school get's out! Holy crap that's common sense! I'm not telling you WHEN I'm going, just that I'll be in Knox this summer. Yay for me.

Bloody hell!

Blog Updated!

Ok, so I took some time to revamp the blog. The rest of the website looks the same, but the blog is all nice and new looking, and completely different from before.

Oh, and I got my comments back. yay!

Please let me know if you experience any glitches with the sight, or if its just me.

Meanwhile, well, what do you think? Indeed, it's all about me.

Guide for New Parents

Courtesy of DadCentric

There is a right way and a wrong way to parent.



To view more (and laugh yourself hoarse) go here.

Soundtrack Moved

So, I moved my Soundtrack, to the top of the page. Now I noticed with Firefox the music doesn't play until you scroll it into view, but when you use internet explorer then it goes right into play. So, I moved it to the top and altered it a little so it takes a little less room (but for some reason, you can't scroll all the way to the bottom of the playlist but oh well)

I like the soundtrack, but it gets in the way of my videos, and somebody did mention (I only had one complaint, yay!) that they didn't like listening to my music and would rather listen to their own so you can listen to my music or shut it off with great convenience. Unfortunately, it sits at the top of my blog and clutters it. Bleh!

I think I might like a smaller playlist, so I might have to go about searching for one so it takes up less room, or I can put it in the sidebar. Anybody have any recommendations?

Or should I just get rid of the thing?

Edit - Ok, I hid it for now. I'm going to figure out something else to do with that thing.

Researching Blogging

So, I've figured out what I want to research for my research paper. I'm going to do a paper on Blogging. I might see if I can get some quotes from some bigger bloggers (if they have the time to respond, which I might not be able to get) but because everybody has a blog these days, I can probably find somebody to quote as a source.

To make this a sociology issue, I thought maybe I would bring into terms about how people use blogs to keep people up to date on their lives and how they use them for a variety of topics such as news sources, a one person editorial, journals, or whatever else. I think I can get enough sources that it might make a worth while topic. I'll post my findings when I turn in my research paper too.

Of course, I have to specify that indeed it is my findings. They are pretty big into making sure you cite your sources and all that jazz.

Meanwhile, I noticed that I tend to write a lot. The snow is melting, I think I'm going to try going for a run sometime this week. Hopefully I don't slip and crack my head open on the ice.

Bloggity

So, I'm kind of in this stage where I want to update my blog and make it easier to surf, because this blog is very much a journal of my life since late 2002.

It's still a work in progress, and I don't know how many people have an RSS feed on this thing (I doubt many do) so I'm hesitant of putting all of my archives up at once to flood somebody's feed.

I think it would seem like I was spamming the system or something. Although the feeds are from early 2004 and earlier, do they do them chronologically?

Anyway, I was reading some of these old blogs and they actually make me laugh, and at times cringe. When I first started this blog, I didn't really think of it as a place for other people to come read my thoughts so I would write a lot of cryptic things, saying something at random without explaining what I was talking about. Heck, there are a lot of posts about me mentioning something about the army, I know I'm talking about the army, but I don't know for the life what I'm talking about.

It's like I was torturing my very small (at the time) readership. I also look at my blogging while I was in Kosovo and some of that drove me nuts because I felt like I couldn't just out and say anything. Way to cryptic.

I'm hoping to eventually have my entire archive on here, but it was funny that a couple of times I actually forsaw the possibility of me gaining some fame and was worried about what people might think of me from my writings. I was pretty self conscious back then, even in 2003, but not really at all now.

A lot of my earlier postings are somewhat angsty and EMO. I swear, zero self confidence in myself. The name Incoherant Ramblings and things better left unsaid really feet the feel of this blog. It has morphed into something else as I've matured and gotten less self centered. I swore to myself that I would give up blogging several times and tried to quit, but it was an addiction, like heroin.

Some of my posts are actually pretty funny. Some of them make no sense, but probably made sense to me at the time.

I think I'll work on getting the archive up before the end of December. It has become my project. And will allow the few readers I have maintained into the twisted mind of a younger Risawn.

GI Jill

While surfing through my blog roll (and sadly, finding several dead links), I ran into this fascinating story about US Army SGT Jill Stevens, also Miss Utah and running in the Miss America Pageant in January 2008.



She even so much has her own official Military Webpage

Going through her flickr page and seeing her interact with some of the people during her deployment in Afghanistan reminded me of the Medcaps in Kosovo, mingling with kids and kicking a soccor ball while i have a weapon slung on my back.

I think I would get along with her. Good luck at the Miss America Pageant, though granted that's one thing I would be petrified to compete in.

Hat tip: Northshore Journal

Looking Back on this Blog

This week has been pretty low key, mostly because of the planning for the funeral and I went back to my civilian job which is pretty much a no-brainer.

I also set myself up to a task that I've been working on all week. Ripping my existing CDs. When I first got my job, it had an awesome discount on CDs and DVDs that isn't quite as awesome anymore. But I realized I don't listen to but a few CDs so I ripped every last one of them and plan to sell the ones I'm not as fond of back to my work and I can buy christmas with the proceeds this year.

When I went through my CDs, I found a couple mix CDs that had been made for me by complete and total strangers who just followed my blog and wrote me in a pen pal fashion.

I look back and I don't think I properly thanked people for what they did for me through this blog. One person sent me a box of Godiva Chocolates anonymously and I never even mentioned it on here, though I probably should have because there was no other way of thanking that person for sending them to me. But I didn't know if this was the apropriate place to say what I recieved from people, I thought I might be gloating. Not to mention the tons of stuff people sent me through my Amazon Wishlist.

And when my server crashed because of the discovery of my blog with over 40,000 hits in one day, just about three years ago, total strangers banded up and sent me over one thousand dollars to pay my server bills and keep my blog going. It was becuase of that I felt obligated to continue my blog through my deployment, people paid me to keep it going. I never mentioned the exact amount I had recieved becuase I didn't know if it was appropriate, it sounded kind of haughty to me to mention all of the goodwill people sent me through my blog.

I don't really recieve a whole lot through my blog these days, and I don't expect it either becuase I really don't need anything through it to be honest. But it was a needed source of encouragement and support during my deployment which wasn't always smooth sailing but should have been a lot easier then it was.

In fact, I don't thank a lot of the people that read it then still read my endless musings and the little mundane stories about my life, but none the less, to the mixed cds, the chocolates, all the movies and books through amazon, and the generous donations from complete and total strangers, Thank You.

This blog has kind of evolved into several things through the course of its lifetime, at one point it was strictly a ranting board from which I could vent my feelings and frustrations or muse about idiocracies I've faced and it's become more of a journal about my life with less ramblings and far less political content.

I'll probably maintain this blog until the day I die, and it will probably metamorphosis into something else completely in that time.