Nope. They just googeled me on twitter. And then sent an automated email. I know this because I got a duplicate a few days later, but from someone else entirely.

While crushing to my ego, it doesn’t dim the fact that they are holding The Undies an “awards” ceremony for your favorite underwear. Each vote will be matched with a donation, up to $100,000. Last year they got 12,000 votes.

So for a small cancer that can actually be prevented, there’s still more work to be done. I know some people are on the fence about Gardasil, and this is one way that you can help bring more funds for more research.

Click away!

Go sign up at Joffrey’s. Gotta have a blog, that’s it. (Although I didn’t go through the signup myself, so I have no idea if it’s limited to Americans.)  They’ll send you coffee.

Some days I wish I drank coffee. Then again, I start to think of how I could do stupider things much, much faster, so I go have another pot of tea instead.

The best part? The theme club is only FIVE BUCKS.

Even better?

There’s a giveaway contest! But hold your clicks, you don’t have to go anywhere – I have FIFTY – that’s right, 50 – free memberships to give away. Leave me a comment saying how much you love new themes, and I’ll send you the details. Isn’t this awesome? Tell all your friends and link to me if you can to help get to word out.

And if he ever gets to this end of Canada, SP is already invited to stop in so I can feed him. Poor boy is too skinny, working so hard.

Note: if your blog is hosted at WordPress.COM, you can’t upload your own themes there. not even with a paid upgrade. You need a self-hosted version of WordPress to install more themes.

Now some people like to know where they’re clicking, so put down any food or beverage and I’ll tell you. Ready? Okay.

They are mac-n-cheese nuggets. That’s right, macaroni and cheese. In nugget form.

My kids will eat a lot of strange things, and for Emma, mac & cheese and chicken nuggets are two fo the handfull of foods she *will* eat, but this?  The pictures of this item in our local flyer was met with “THAT IS SO WRONG!” and “Ewwww, grooosssss…”

And when you click on thru and see the pics, it sure does explain a lot. Especially why we called the first couple of kids “practise”.

(HT: friends on LJ)

Rachel at her book review blog has a giveaway for The Minivan Years: Celebrating the Hectic Joys of Motherhood, so go here to enter. It is especially geared towards Christian moms, and seems like a good as well as funny read. You may also want to visit Rachel’s main blog, just to say hey.

Carrie also has another giveaway for more Ayo CDs. I won one, and they sent her two more! So go enter there too.

The great thing about blog giveaways is you can not only find new blogs to read, but you can enter as many as you like!

Helping girls hate everything about their bodies earlier every year. The high points are new Nair products for girls as young as 9, and brazillian waxes for the 10 to 15 set.

UGH. I’m thinking I’m glad I “shelter” my girls.

My longish point there is we still have family “over there”, and every Christmas we all exchange cards and our cousins send over a monstously huge 1 kilo bar of English Cadbury’s milk chocolate. It is slightly different than the Canadian Cadbury’s chocolate, is why.

So last Thursday, there I was, out and about doing my shopping. (See? The British phraseology is slipping in there. Between this and the over-indulgence of Jane Austen over the holidays, we should just pack our bags and head back to the Queen.) The children were naturally with me, and we split up when we went to the mall.

Sarah came running up to me as I was once again perusing the scrapbook aisle of the Great Canadian Dollar Store.

“Mom! In Shopper’s they have a big Cadbury bar! And it’s on SALE! And it’s the LAST ONE!”

At this point we had no word about the annual chocolate from England, only that it was somewhere between here and there. Ron had said if ever we saw one of those bars here, we should grab it. We *had* seen it before, but it was elusive. Always when we didn’t have the extra cash, or it was heavily pre-holiday priced.  I hemmed and hawed a bit, waffled some more, and in the end got it. The clerk even thanked me profusely for “getting rid of it”.

On the way home, we stopped at the post office to pick up the mail. Sarah came back to the car grinning, carrying an armload of packages. She tossed one to me. “Guess what Mom? It’s from England!” It was suspiciously chocolate-bar sized. Now, normally the cousins send the whole thing to my aunt, and she divvies it up and sends along our portion. But I suddenly thought, what if it had been done on their end?

I laughed and laughed.

When we got back to the house, I opened up the parcel, and instead of chocolate, there was a book. I gotta tell you, I actually love new books *more* than chocolate. It’s true. Even better, it was a book our cousin had co-authored, AND it was on a portion of British history. Enclosed was a note stating he hoped we liked it.

I think I may have swooned.

The Battle of St Albans tells the story of two epic battles during the War of the Roses. These took place in the city of St Albans, which not only stands today, but that’s where some of my family now lives. The authors help clear up some of the confusion and legend surrounding the War of the Roses, explaining the political landscape of the time. They bring the battlefields to life, thorough series of diagrams, modern-day photographs of actual places and generous descriptions of the time and places. There’s even pictures of reenactments of soldier’s uniforms and fighting techniques, even snippets of text from documents from that time frame, in the  participant’s own words.

As Emma and I flipped through the book, we seriously got lost in the 15th century. We were immersed. And I longed for England once again. Mike did a bang-up job, and I’m sure our family could not have been more proud.
Back to the book – it’s jam-packed at 182 pages, 5.5″ x 8″ bound format and loads of b&w photos. By the time I got to the back cover, I was absolutely delighted to find it was part of a series of books based on all sorts of battles in Britain – all the way up through the Second World War. I immediately though of all our homeschooling and/or history buff friends who would *love* to get their hands on such books.

You can buy the book on Amazon.com  and visit the publiser’s site, Pen and Sword books for more historic battles. I’ll be over here, curled up with the book, noshing on chocolate.

It’s also on the northwest corner. You can imagine what it’s been like, especially on the brutally cold night with strong winds.  At one point, we pulled the bed away from the walls because it was too chilly. So , we decided it would be better to move to the small “baby” room at the top of the stairs.

But first we had to clean it up, as it had some boxes stored in there, some tools and it was the room we had ripped the floor up in to find wiring.

Last night we just had the bed and alarm clock in there, so today I’ll be moving in the dresser and the clothes. It has a smaller closet, no rod and no shelves, just hooks. Ron will put up some shelving for his things, as he uses the huge wardrobe in the green bathroom for his dress clothes for work.

At any rate, the floral bedroom closet was cavernous and dark, also without rod, but with huge deep shelves and no light. It would make a great soundbooth for podcasts though *cough* Sage *cough*. (bundle up, and we’ll knock before we flush the toilet on the other side of the wall). We’ll keep the door to that room closed, and even after an hour we noticed a difference.

So the little nursey we’re in will probably work out fine for us, especially once I get the two huge east-facing windows covered in dark fabric. It was a little bright when the sun rose.

It was warmer though.

***

Go visit Jay. She wrote some nice things about one of my pictures.

All her son has is his mother’s diary, and since the days of the week in 2007 lined up with the diary from 1945, he put it all online. Now that we are into 2008, he has decided to put up the partial diary from 1946. He also keep a news blog with backstory.

This makes me think that as long as people have a website of their words, their pictures, bits of themselves out there in cyberspace, then they are never really gone.