What's your smurf name?

I was browsing the bulletins of myspace and my friend Sarah posted this. (Thank you Sarah, for always posting the best!).

http://bluebuddies.com/smurf_fun/what_is_your_smurf_name/what_is_your_smurf_name.htm

I typed in my name: Kate Lathrop, and got Summer Smurf

Then I did a mix of my roommates name and mine: Aubreykate Yeanoplos and got Smarty Pants Smurf! We got a kick out of that one!

Other names have been Angelic Smurf, Lovable Smurf, Ol' Mac Smurf, Photographer Smurf, Vanilla Smurf.

What's weird...my roommate is a photographer, and she's photographer smurf!

Check it out!

taking care of business

suggestions please!
What is the most effective way of getting things done?
I just made a list of everything I need to do for school and I'm trying to figure how to get it done best.
Step one: turn off phone.
Step two: close door
Step three: buckle down and DO THE WORK! don't let anything distract from what is important to get done.
Step four: Mantra- "you'll feel better when this is all done."

But does it work better to multitask, or get one thing done at a time?
Does it work to have scheduled breaks?
Do I get the hard stuff done first? Or do I get the easy stuff out of the way so I'm not thinking about it anymore?
What do I do?

Text Mania

If phones could make food and water, anyone could live on a desert island and get by just fine for a month or two.
It's not a new craze.
People are addicted to their phones.
We put everything we need on our phones. GPS, MP3, TV, internet, everything!

And I'm at 600 text messages 10 days into my billing period. I'm texting my friends.Coordinating rent payments with my roommates. Texting my boyfriend "good morning", "how's your day" and "goodnight". Communicating during boring classes. Taking care of business in general.

I get around 50 text messages per day, give or take. That's about 2 per hour. But in those hours that I don't get text messages, I wonder what is wrong. I wonder why no one is talking to me.

A little obsessive? YES!

I'm not alone. Their are support groups for people who are addicted to their cell phones. Like for alcoholics.

I'm going to be careful...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,204046,00.html
http://media.www.cm-life.com/media/storage/paper906/news/2007/09/19/Lifeline/My.Cell.Phone.Addiction-2976361.shtml

Bettas

Anxiety
I have two new pets at the office. Shown at left are my red and blue betta fish respectively, Dragon and Munch.
Soo... look at how close the bowls are. Are they too close together?
Reason I'm concerned: My friend Brittney told me about how one of her betta fish jumped into her other betta fish's tank and killed it! I just got these fish and I just don't want them to die. I knew they wouldn't get along. (My boyfriend Matt told me that if two male betta fish are in the same LAKE, they will find each other and have a fish war.)
It makes me wonder who the tougher fish is, Dragon or Munch? I'm NOT testing this out. I'm rather attached to both of them.
So I'm headed to work early tomorrow to clean their tiny bowls (I'm getting bigger ones soon). Hopefully I'm find them both alive and swimming.

Here's Munch- he's my favorite color, blue! he's the smaller of the two, the therefore, a munch.



And here's Dragon. Red Dragon! He's my roommate Aubrey's favorite color!

I've been researching how to care for bettas. Here's some sites that have helped.
http://www.bettafish.com/
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/anabantids2/p/betta.htm
and of course- wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_Fighting_Fish

A little bit of luck

I did a nerdy thing today.
I picked up a penny from the ground.
I do that. I pick up pennies that I see on the sidewalk, or the street. I put them in my back pocket and forget about them. At the end of the day I find the forgotten penny and put it in my dish of extra change.
I couldn't tell you of this helps me in any way. There was one time when i lost my debit card and had to scrimp for change to buy food for a couple of days. But most of the change I spent were quarters, dimes and the occaisional nickel.

"See a penny, pick it up
All day long you'll have good luck"

A superstition or a random rhyme? I haven't measured the amount of "luck" I've had on the days when I've picked up pennies. I have a hard time deciphering "luck" from "not luck". I suppose my surprise at the end of the day when I find the penny would constitute as something that makes me marginally happier.

Maybe that's all the penny is needed for- a little bit of luck. Pennies, or pence, or fennig, or pfennig, or a penni (depending on what country you're in) are all 1/100 of that currency. Should pennies bring the picker- upper 1/100th more luck than they otherwise would have had that day?

"Spending a penny" means "to urinate" (thus the word pee). So does having an extra penny help one to ne less constipated later?

Lots of businesses have little change holders for extra pennies. People take them and leave them. And yet there are talks of discontinuing the use fo the penny in the U.S. (http://www.pennies.org/poll_july2002.htm). Will this gradually lead to the run- down 1/100th of luck for the American people? I really doubt it.

But some things are "worth every cent", (like google or the iPhone apparently) don't believe me? google "pennies"...

Talk like a pirate day!

don't forget about Talk like a pirate day! it's tomorrow! My boss Elaine is crazy weird about pirates!

This is the main page
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

...and instructions for how to talk like a pirate!
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/howto.html

Find out your pirate name!
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/howto.html
Mine's Epileptic Antionia Smythe

and another pirate name quiz
http://www.piratequiz.com/
my name is
Dread Pirate Cash

and of course, the pirate translator!
http://www.syddware.com/cgi-bin/pirate.pl

and some pirate jokes!

Why is pirating addictive? They say once ye lose yer first hand, ye get hooked!

What does a Dyslexic Pirate Say? RRAAAAAAAAAAA!

What does a pirate say when he has a heart attack? Arrr! Me heartie!

A pirate walks into a bar wearing a paper towel on his head. He sits down at the bar and orders some dirty rum.

The bartender asks, "Why are you wearing a paper towel?"

"Arrr..." says the pirate. “I’ve got a bounty on me head!"

LDS Institute dedication

Among the talks given at the LDS Institute of religion at ASU, overall message was the importance of secular and religious education being intertwined in order to find truth. President of ASU, Michael Crow noted the changes that had been made to the university in the past few years in order the facilitate secular and religious education side- by- side. he used Thomas Jefferson's gravestone as an example of the importance of standing up for religious freedom. Jefferson understood this principle despite being a deist, and out of the three achievements he put on his gravestone, the last one was the addition of the rights to religious freedom in the constitution.

Elder Henry B. Eyering, an apostle in the LDS church, told the story of his family, and the testimony of his father being a combination of chemistry and God. His father found truth in both, and knew them to be true.

I had a reminder today to be the best I can be in every way. It is easy to work on one part of life at a time and forget the others. I'll work on my spiritual side, and then I'll put that aside to work on my emotional side. I always thought that this was the way I was supposed to do things before tonight. I learned that I should be working on everything simultaneously, always striving to make myself better.

Myspace or Facebook

Until recently, I've sworn by facebook as the greatest online social utility. Though less popular, facebook was easier to navigate and kept me updated on my friends better. Then I started playing with my myspace account, and found that this worldwide networking site let me say a lot more about myself than facebook. The idea is the same with both of the, but the options are different.

Knowing html lets a user make any graphic they want to on myspace, with makes it possible to choose backgrounds, icons, and formats. People can be friends with their favorite television shows and the characters on these shows. They can befriend nightclubs, schools, and cities, as well as their friends. Videos and websites are posted.

Facebook provides games which users can play with each other. It informs users when their friends make changes to their profiles, and tell how they are doing. The format is the same for all pages, which makes a uniform feeling to the site.

These are only some of the features of each of the websites. I've decided that I need both. Perhaps it's just my addictive personality speaking, but I have friends on facebook who are not on myspace, and vis versa. Not everyone needs to use both websites, but I find myself checking both of them often. Both social utilities. Both forms of communication. Both addicting. Who cares abnout the differences