The problem with blogging

Blogging is a great thing and I love it. But it's a bit time-consuming, and there is only so much a person can blog about in the course of a day, or week. So I'm considering shutting down this blog since I really don't use it anymore, and haven't in a long time. The blogs of mine that get updated regularly are on Live Journal and My Space, probably because they only exist for fun. My other Blogger blogs are for my art, or for my alumni chapter for grad school. This one had sort of become an adjunct to the alumni blog and then just sort of faded. So I'm wondering if I should just give it up altogether.

We'll see. I'm thinking about it now and will decide in the next couple of weeks.

Free Burma

Today, this blog is part of International Blogger's Day for Burma. Information on how you might participate are below the graphic.

Free Burma! Petition Widget

Name: (required)

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International bloggers are preparing an action to support the peaceful revolution in Burma. We want to set a sign for freedom and show our sympathy for these people who are fighting their cruel regime without weapons.

Wanted: supplies for youth summer program: lost our funding!

If you are able to help, please contact this blog's administrator
and you will be put in touch with Tina.

Dear Community,

I serve as a volunteer for Positive Youth of Tomorrow, which serves youth in
the inner city of Buffalo. We serve children, parents, and youth/young
adults. We are working to increase literacy, life skills, safety, and reduce
violence this summer. We had been promised funding from a Buffalo City
agency, but after procuring space, volunteers, and children for the program
they have now "changed their minds." Please help us have a safe place for
children to go this summer--there are robberies, assaults, and shootings of
youth DAILY in this area and there are no summer programs available for
these children in this area. If you have any of the following items, please
email me. Drop offs are welcome (several locations) but someone may be able
to pick up. If you would like to see a written copy of the program, I would
be happy to email it to you. Thank you!

Tina

Gardening Supplies
General Office Supplies (paper, pens, pencils, tape, staples, etc.)
Art Supplies (crayons, markers, poster paints, clay, posterboard, coloring
books, etc.)
Teaching supplies (childrens' books, flash cards, educational toys, etc.)
kitchen supplies (common household items--to teach food preparation &
safety)
T-Shirts (100)
Silkscreening Supplies (to create t-shirts)
Food (packaged snacks, drinks, etc. )
Television
DVD Player
Storage Cabinet
Chalk/Wipe off Boards (3)
Easels (6)
Inkjet Computer Printer
Sports Equipment (Balls, etc.)
Sterilite/Rubbermaid Containers
Easel Pads (6)
Ink Cartridges
Gift cards for grocery stores, walmart, etc. (to purchase supplies)

Update: CPSI 2007

Hi Everyone!
The following is the latest word from CEF. It seems that there will be a CPSI this year, but I don't think there is a location yet. As soon as I come across any new information I will post it here.

"Dear Creative Problem Solver,

This is to let you know that we are in the final stages of negotiation with a venue for CPSI 2007. We are expecting the dates to be Sunday, June 24 to Friday, June 29 (We are shortening the conference by a day, with a Sunday night start. Pre-Conference programs will also be held on Sunday.)

While we had planned to return to Loyola University in Chicago, circumstances after the conference, including the resignation of our Loyola contact and pricing demands, caused us to reconsider and ultimately decline the venue.

Over the past several months, we have been in discussions with 37 venues none of whom could accommodate us this year, but a select few of whom are interested in our business for CPSI 2008. We have been negotiating with 4 additional venues, one of whom is in the forefront.

We will be opening Leader solicitation in February and will send out a notice when we do so. We will also be sharing final dates, program changes and other changes at that time.

Thanks for your interest and patience and stay tuned for more information coming soon.

Sincerely,
Victoria Cliche
Executive Director
Creative Education Foundation

PS: The 2006 Integrating Creative Leadership class is launching the CEF Newsletter next month, so keep a look out for that as well!!!"

Creative Connections Meeting Chage

Hi Everyone!

Just letting you all know that the date for this months Creative Connections meeting had to be changed. The new date is:

Saturday, January 27 at noon in the Peanut Room at the Center.

Hope to see you there as we vote in new leadership!

Creative Connections January Meeting

Hi Everyone!
Hope the new year is starting out to be a good one for you all!

This is a year of changes for Creative Connections, and our first order
of business for 2007 is to choose new leadership! (It's been a lot of
fun being Creative Connections President, but it's time for me to move
on to other things.) 

So if you are interested in becoming involved with Creative
Connections, this is an excellent time to do so. Or, just come to the
meeting to say hi! 

We are meeting on Saturday, Jan 20 at noon, in the Peanut Room at the
Center. 

Hope to see you there!

:)
Jen

Holiday Ideas from the BSC Alumni Association

Season's Greetings and best wishes for a wonderful holiday season!! I hope that your holiday preparations are coming along alright!! Speaking of the holiday season, I wanted to let you know about a special holiday promotion that the Buffalo State Alumni Association is offering to help you out with your holiday shopping needs (see below - in italics)!!!

Holiday Gift Idea!

Are you searching for a holiday gift item or stocking stuffer? The Buffalo State Alumni Association would like to help you out by offering a discounted rate on Delta Sonic Super Kiss Car Wash tickets! For only $10.00 (a $3.00 savings off the retail price, along with no sales tax), you can purchase a Super Kiss ticket (good for 1 Super Kiss Car or Truck Wash including “Tires Hand Dressed” and a “5-Day Guarantee Wash Again Free”).

Support the Buffalo State Alumni Association and give someone a nice holiday gift at the same time! Gift boxes are available as well! Cash, check (made out to BSCAA), and credit card (Visa and Mastercard) payments are accepted. To purchase a ticket, stop by the Alumni Office (Cleveland Hall 305) or give us a call at 878-6001 to charge by phone.

Thanks, in advance, for your support and take care! Please feel free to spread the word and pass this promotion along to others!!!

You're also welcome to designate the proceeds ($2.00) of your ticket to one of the following chapters (see below), so considering that you're all affiliated with alumni chapters, this could be a very good way to raise some additional funds for your chapter:

Art Education

Career and Technical Education

Communication

**Creative Connections**

Criminal Justice

Education

Educational Opportunity Program

Football

Health & Wellness

International

Leaders of Color

McNair Scholars Program

Medical Alumni Society

Men’s Hockey

Men’s Soccer

Psi Phi Beta Fraternity

Rugby

Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity

Silas L. Boyd Memorial A Cappella Alumni Choir

Student Personnel Administration

United Students Government

WBNY

Whispering Pines Camp Board

Women’s Soccer

Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity

Take care and Happy Holidays to all of you!!!
Stay in touch and thanks for your continued support of the Buffalo State Alumni Association!!

Happy Holidays

Just playing around with the newly improved Blogger... so far, so good!

Regarding CPSI 2007

Hello to all the Wondering Creatives,

CPSI is scheduled for June 24th to 29th, 2007.

CEF has not confirmed the location because while we planned to return to Loyola, and would like to, we are in on-going negotiations with the University. A significant contributing factor being that our contact left Loyola in August and her replacement started November 1st.

We have a back-up venue, that is not located in Illinois. Ideally, we would like to return to Chicago but are not sure that will happen. As frustrating as it is for all concerned who attend and present at CPSI, it is even more frustrating as the organizers.

So please help spread the word the CPSI 2007 is planned for the last full week in June, and know that as soon as things are settled we will let you know.

Warm regards,
Victoria Cliche

To all the Things that go Bump in the Night

Because you never know who.. or what.. is reading

Hope your Halloween was suitably creepy and candy filled
:)

x posted at What is the Porpoise of Existance

Returning to Creativity

I've pretty much been leaving this blog alone lately.. it's been just about two months since I've posted on it. Not that I've got nothing to say, because my LiveJournal has been active, I just haven't felt like spending the time. That blog has always been about fun so maintaining it is usually easier.

But I felt a bit inspired and that is due to this link a friend sent me. It's 30 second movies, acted out by bunnies! I have not watched all of them, but I do reccomend Bunny "Night of the Living Dead" and "Brokeback Mountain".

I have no idea how active this blog is going to be. I don't want to discontinue because I've always felt as though I need a forum in case I feel like writing something awesomely intelligent, but right now bunny movies are about all I'm interested in at the moment. Not that that's a bad thing, I happen to think the bunny movies are one of the most creative things I've come across in a long time. They're also hilarious which never hurts.

What I'm not going to do, however, is enage in political debate. My last post here was a step into the area of politics because it was something I felt strongly about and felt the need to blog about it. I'm not responding to the comment that was left, because I do not feel that this is the appropriate forum for that. I do not want this to turn into a politcal blog at all because there are other blogs designed specifically for that purpose. However it is my blog, so I can write about whatever I want as the mood strikes me. That being said, I'm not deleting the comment because I feel that everyone is entitled to their opinion, weather or not I agree, which in this case I do not. So as far as I'm concerned my foray into politics is over. At least for now.

So that's where I'm at. We'll take things as they come and then go from there.

Whoo Hoo!

I'm going to step into politics for a bit to congratulate Ned Lamont in his victory over Lieberman in CT.

And a note to the Senators and other Democrats in NY and around the country.. I'm sure my reader will help pass along the message: Do the right thing and pay attention to what happened here. We're tired of the war, which never should have happened in the first place, and we're tired of the current political climate which seems bent on eliminating the civil rights of everyone. Fight back. Or plan a career change, because those who don't will not remain in office much longer. And someone talk to Joe and explain to him what it means to lose gracefully. His current posturing is appaling.

That's it for the politics for now. I usually don't bother because the subject is covered so well, and so completely elsewhere, but this time it was important.

My other favorite story..

Is this one, where a guard dog accidentally ate Elvis Presley's teddy bear. Go ahead, read it for yourself!

I'm just glad it's an interesting news day. On a day like this it's much to hot to do much of anything except blog..

I want to move to Scotland..

The polititians there have much more interesting scandals than our do. Read the article from Yahoo News here. Our elected officials have tax and money type things going on, but it seems as though there hasn't been a sex scandal, at least an interesting one, since Clinton left office.

My favorite part of this story is where he fired his legal team and decided to defend himself. By putting his wife on the stand:

Gail Sheridan, 42, gave a passionate defense of her husband and said she would have killed him and dumped his body in Glasgow's river Clyde if she believed the allegations.

"You would be in the Clyde with a piece of concrete tied round you and I would be in court for your murder," she said.

Gail Sheridan also said McGuire had obviously never had sex with her husband because, if she had, she would have mentioned his hairy body in her kiss-and-tell revelations.

"You are like a monkey, so anybody rolling an ice cube around your body would end up with a hairball ..." she told her husband across the packed court room. "There is more hair on your body than there is on your head."

It dosen't get much better than that..

ah HA!!!

(Picture downloaded from Boing Boing)


I always suspected those damned cartoon cats were evil...

Blogging

I've been wondering lately why I don't update very often. It's not like I have nothing to say, because I do. I've even got a file of interesting articles I've been meaning to write about but haven't. And I can rant about my love/hate relationship with Yahoo indefinately.. Love the email because it works well, hate the groups because it dosen't and IM isn't working tonight which pisses me off, etc. But this page hasn't had a fresh entry in months, even though I've commented on other blogs, and I've been kind of wondering why. It's not as though I'm scrambling for free time or anything.

But that could be a big part of it. I'm spending a lot of time these days working on my resume and trying to not get down on myself because it's taking fucking forever to find steady work. If I were up to my eyeballs the momentum would carry into regular blogging. That's probably why I'm not art blogging anymore as well... I'm just not allowing myself the space to just sit and read and be thoughtful about things that aren't directly related to my job hunt. (I'm aware that I need to let up a bit on The Hunt... If I let myself become obsessive about it, which I'm totally capable of becoming, I'll just drive myself nuts and the search will end up taking longer than it needs to.)

Then I went to my LiveJournal and noticed that I post there at least once a week.

Maybe it's because I know who I'm "speaking" to. The people on my LJ friends list are folks I've been speaking to for a few years now from the Buffy groups on Yahoo. (Which is where my love/hate relationship with the forum began.) And the LJ is something I've always done just for fun. This blog was meant to be a means for me to keep up with my writing. Ironic that I really don't write on it very much.. in many ways it's become another vehicle for advertising for my alumni activities.

I'm keeping both, but I have to think about what I want this blog to be. I had been thinking that I should scrap this one because I really don't use it, but I'm reluctant to do that because I'm sort of attached. We'll see. If nothing else it's a second forum for me to just say what's on my mind...

Being Polite

While I was cursing Yahoo for being totally unable to log into anything over there, YIM, mail, etc., I came across this article about the most polite major city in the whole wide world. Wouldn't you know that NYC won hands down!!

Some people will be surprised at this, but I'm not. I didn't realize just how polite NYers are until I moved away from there some years ago. People talk to their neighbors, they look out for each other, all that sort of thing. The study in the article looked at opening doors, helping to pick up something dropped and salespeople saying thank you to customers. I suppose what does NYC in in terms of image is the fast pace. If you're not accustomed to that, it can come across as being blown off or brusqueness. But in my experience, once the local person becomes aware that they are dealing with a visitor, they will try to help out. There's also the tendency to being direct and straightforward in conversation, which can come across as rudeness. Think about it though, would you rather be told the bald truth, as they see it, or have someone lead you down the garden path? If you have no time for me, tell me so I can move on. anything else is passive agressive and no one wants that.

But that's not to say that people elsewhere are jerks, and my time living upstate has been hellish or whatever. Because that's not the case at all, I'm just saying that NYC has a tendency to be labled as rude and that is just not so. What does surprise me is that Toronto came in a distant third (behind Zurich.) I would have expected TO to be a lot higher than that because I have yet to meet a rude Canadian. I'm also surprised that no other major US city made even the top 20.. Yes, it's a world-wide poll, but you'd think that at least ONE other would get mentioned... Particularly those cities in regions frequently thought of as politeness personified. I suppose this is an area where one would have to dig into the research criteria and all that sort of thing. I also wonder if it really is a level playing field to have this be a world wide study and not take into considerations cultural differences and social norms.

Anyway, this was nice to see. And blogging about it certainly distracted me from my frustration at not being able to login to my Yahoo email.....

Upstate

I've lived in upstate NY for a little over 15 years now and for the most part I really like it. Beautiful country, nice people, and not that far away from home. My original purpose for moving here was school. Obviously I haven't been "in school" for 15 years, there were two when I lived in Northern Kentucky after undergrad, and when I moved back in 1998 I worked until I figured out my next move. Now that I've finished with school, I'm looking at my options.

My first choice, obviously, to me anyway, is to stay here. I've been here for most of my adult life and it's become home. And I really like where I live and the people I've surrounded myself with. But it's a bit frustrating because of the local job market. My first thought was that this is a Buffalo issue.. It's no news flash that the population here has been dwindling for years. But then I came across this article in the NYTimes. Seems that upstate in general is dwindling and it's due to a disappointing job market.

It's not that there are no jobs at all, but rather the kinds of jobs. I'm nearly 40 and have no desire to work in a call center or cashier. I've got student loans and all that sort of thing and I'm really tired of being poor. Which is what those jobs mean: you have a paycheck that barely covers living expenses and get treated like crap to boot. Jobs like that are perfect for kids just starting out, but not when you are trying to build a life for yourself.

It's not that I have a problem with moving to another part of the country, my job hunt is nationwide. What bothers me is that my hand seems to be forced. I don't particulary want to bounce around between four part time jobs. I want health insurance and a saving plan.

I suppose I'm jut frustrated. 15 years is a long time in a region. I hope I can stay here, but it's not looking good.

Painting like Pollock

I came across this website recently, that lets you paint like Pollock. Kind of. It lets you make digital, fairly random splatters and clicking the mouse will change colors. It's pretty cool and a fun way to pass time.

Thanks to way2busymom for the link!

Go visit this website!

There are a couple of reasons why I'm reccomending visiting dohiyimir. Firstly, there's some really great photograhy and promoting artists is something I need to do more of as this is sort of an art blog. When I feel like writing about art anyway, which I don't always but that's not the point. There's also great articles and a smattering of politics.

But mostly I'm linking because this blog's creator is a friend of my brother's. I'm not going to get into the recent nastiness that my family has been subjected to, suffice it to say that I'm spitting nails here. Anyway, the flip side to all this is that it is in circumstaces like this when you find out who your friends are. And NTodd, among others, has been a good friend. So it's my way of saying thank you.

(note: Blogger seems to be squirrly at the moment, so an addition to the blogroll has to wait.)