Gabrielle Bouliane Poem To Help Kick Your Butt

Almost finished with VloMo 2012. Trying to find a way to re-vitalize my other blog and make it more useful and enjoyable. I still struggle with it, trying to find the right voice.

I know I need to step up and find a new path. I know good things are waiting for me once I fight the fear and the often debilitating voices of doubt.




From up on high this is a recording of Gabrielle Bouliane, reading a poem from 2009. Her message is constant and clear.

The grim reaper snagged Gabrielle in 2010.

Get a move on and do what you gotta do.

The Pain of Creating and Cleaning on Thanksgiving

Being a cubical bunny does not leave a lot of time for creativity. Nor does it leave a lot of time for advanced household maintenance. One of the reasons I like Thanksgiving is that I get serious me time.

I made a list. 20+ items that I want to complete by Sunday. I was digging for my Earthquake kit. Yes, I have one. You should too. Even if you don't currently find yourself in earthquake territory.

Like I said,  I was digging for my Earthquake kit and I found my electric screwdriver. I've been passively looking for that thing for months.

Then I notice the curtain that should be replaced. And the curtain by the window waiting for me to replace the icky one for the nicer one.

I stand on what I thought was a solid cabinet. It wasn't. I crash through to the bottom of the cabinet. My heart suspends. My brain goes to evaluation mode.

Leg broken? No.
Foot broken? No.
Toe broken? No.
Toe hurts like hell? Oh yes.

I truly take a moment to be grateful I haven't broken any body part on Thanksgiving. Because to have the paramedic ambulance come to your door is at least $995 to start.

Not that I could have gotten to the front door.

I am now sitting in a chair nursing and icing an angry toe. I am grateful.

But it hurts.

I don't do pain well. I avoid it as much as possible. Will now commence to dig for ibuprofen.

I will resume the search for the Earthquake kit. I might find the missing iPod Nano that I lost a year ago. See, the way this works is that I look for one thing and find five others items.

It is way better than Black Friday shopping because I already know that I want it.

I have to say I'm not as gung ho as I was about this cleaning thing. My back-up plan was to stay in bed watching DVDs.

Hmm. Nope, I'll brace up and finish what I started.

I have too. The bed is covered with the other stuff that I moved to find the screwdriver.

It is gonna be a long day.

When This Frugalista Walks Away From A Sale

Yesterday I found out that I had a store credit at an office store. I guess buying toner and ink pens finally paid off for me. Walking around I realized that the store had removed the camera section. I couldn't buy a still camera and I really don't need another camcorder.

So I'm thinking. I could get a full size or 7 inch tablet to test tablet video options and applications. 

Now, being a loyal frugalista I wasn't going to pay for the high tone stuff. Not in the budget. But there were two tablets on sale that I could have worked with.

The Lenovo A1 has a front and rear facing camera. Has an SD card slot. Selling for $159 and with my store credit I could walk out paying $80. What stopped me was that it is running Gingerbread 2.3.1, it has a single core and the demo in the store was not getting juiced from the USB. I could chalk that up to demo damage or a future problem.

The other contender was the Google Nexus 7. Has only a front facing 1.2 megapixel camera. Runs on Android Jellybean 4.1. What stopped me was that I couldn't get it out of password mode. No expandability, no SD slot and not sure if it is anything more than a consumption device.

I looked around at the others. I have to say that the new Amazon HD tablet did a better job of teaching me how to use it. It was like it wanted me as a customer and as a relationship. Might give it more consideration.

The problem is, like Alton Brown, I don't want a uni-taskter device. I want to do things. Create stuff.

I manage to get out the store. I am glad I did. I looked at reviews for both devices. That Lenovo A1 has got issues. At $80 I could grit my teeth and say fine. Except that it isn't.

I also found out that the new Nexus will be 16GB for $199 so I should not buy the 8GB version.

It is okay not to spend. And feel good about it. It takes practice but waiting is good.

It Is Time

I was inspired or commanded to try to make this video. I only had a few minutes. The dream version was much better with photos flying in and sound quotes from all over the place.



This is nothing like that. It is simple. Imperfect but close enough.

Open Letter to the Great Goddess of Cinema,

The next time you want to inspire me could you at least give me three days notice? I could have tighten this up a bit and made it the way you showed me in the dream.

I appreciated the heads up about the song but for Election Day I would have liked to made a kapow kind of video.

Yes, I know. Simple is underrated. Yes, I understand I am not capable of kapow at this time. Yes, I remember the grade I got in the 16mm film class.

Anyway, thanks for the idea. I appreciate you thinking of me after all of these years.

The Story Behind the Car In the Mall

I hate it when I see it. There is nothing I can do short of being the person trying to stop people from doing the wrong thing. I learned a long time ago, you cannot stop a person determined to do the wrong thing.


This is my short VloMo 2012 contribution to take a humorous way to explaining.

Basically, a company rents a shiny car from a local car dealer. Then they rent car space in your local mall. People fill out a detail contest sheet with a lot of personal information, much more than what is needed for a contest.

On the back, in teeny tiny type they will tell you that you must fill out the info completely or it will be rejected. Or if you are under 18 it will be rejected. Or if your income is too low you will be rejected.

In some states you cannot will $100,000. You might have a chance at $5,000. Or $199. Depends on where you live.

If you "qualify" then you get to the next level, a timeshare meeting. You have to attended. You will then be given the hard sell on purchasing a timeshare. If you survive then you might walk out with steak knives. Or a radio. Not sure what the mooks who survive get these days.

Oh, should you happen to win the $100,000 you do know that you have to pay taxes on it right?

Is Videoblogging Passe for Women?

There are days when I feel like a loon. A loon is a strange looking bird that looks like parts of other birds. But it is a loon. Today I started a Vlomo 2012 video gallery located at http://vlomo2012.tumblr.com

I've been up since 4 a.m. That is part of the reason I feel like a loon. Yep. That's me. I feel out of sync but trying to connect. I think I'm failing. But I am not. I am just tired.

I'm still a loon. Now this does have something to do with my question. Being a loon I got to waddle to get in the water.

I loathe to define videoblogging. It gets folks antsy. I don't want to get into a semantic fight with anybody. So here are a few statement and you can pick out the one that appeals to you:

• A blog that contains a video post on a regular basis.
• A video series that is posted by an internet distribution company that allows other people to watch or post the video on their blog.
• A talking head video using videos instead of the keyboard to express their feelings.
• A person using video to express a person, place or thing and then uploads the video for others to see.

So before you get to the question of "is videoblogging passe for women" you first got to ask is it passe?

For some folks yes. And that is okay. These are the folks that have moved on to professional careers in video or media.

Or it could be that because of the time sink it can be (but does not have to be) there just isn't time after work, school, family, bathing and sleeping to cram one more thing in your day.




Or you have said what you needed to say and are done.(PS - Margaret ain't done, she's made two more videos since this one.)

But there is another group that is hesitant to try. I feel that I haven't done a good job of encouraging women to step it up and truly use video to be visible and express themselves.

I'm not giving up Create Video Notebook but I gotta find a better way to engage women and men to take advantage of this time before the gates are closed and we can't communicate with each other.

Why? Because we have foolish old men who do not understand biology. We have women being defined by men into functional boxes of utility; formally known as the kitchen and the bedroom.

That is never a good thing. Not even for men.

The menopause story has got to be told to the Boomer women. The older women needs to tell the young ones how they survived.

Should reality television be our touch post as how women behave?

Nay I say nay! (See, squawking like a loon.)

So maybe the term videoblogging will eventually go away but I hope that folks tell their stories visually once in a while.

It can be slides to narration to video.
It can be you talking in front of a camera with a memory of your favorite dress.
It can be you sipping a cup of coffee as you talk about last night.

You got a smartphone that records audio and video? That is all you need to get started.