transposable element

finally got my free skype minicards from moo.

got skype? ping me!

where did november go? thank zeus for the adventskalendar from AnP; december’s crept up on me, and i haven’t prepared a thing! need to get /make(?) an advent wreath! got one week to clean up, shop, and pack. send christmas cards. buy christmas gifts….NOW!

arrgh, why do i always leave things for the last minute?! uh, i better go.

over the last few months, my back has taken a lot of brunt for the extended hours i’ve been spending tapping on the keyboard. the hours, the posture, but most especially, i blame the absolutely non-ergonomic kitchen stool that’s been supporting my butt while i work, for my lower back pains. it’s a cheap metal-and-wicker combo that’s such a torture to sit on, ikea no longer sells them (although the granas chair looks quite similar to mine). being the tightwad that i am, i never thought of investing on a new chair.

and then i saw the Aeron Desk Office Chair coming up in a discussion on problogger. that’s 700 bucks for the basic features, with the “full-featured posturefit” racking up to almost a thousand dollars. whoaah…

i think i’ll be needing more ben-gay for a while.

am not yet done doing the ostrich maneouvre, but i haven’t been entirely passive, either. the last two weeks, i’ve immersed myself in so much work, i’ve left little time for idle musings. and you know what? it works. work is the best antidote to negativism. it’s whittles your time, saps your energy, leaves you good for almost nothing else afterwards. but man, am i knackered! it has also put my sleeping patterns in a limbo. this weekend, i’ve been waking up nearly at noon, sleeping early, only to stare at the ceiling from 2 til 4 in the morning. wreck.

***

lately, my bedtime reading has been purely from what they call the chick-lit genre. brainless simple plots that are as shallow as a puddle, but fun and heartwarming. my husband chides me endlessly about it, and implores me to grab something mehr vernünftig. for newton’s sake, i’m providing content for three science-oriented blogs, you can be sure i’m reading my fair share of substantial literature. plus the two or three scientific manuscripts i copy-edit almost daily. by the time i get to bed, puh-leeease, i need something else, noh!

***

either i train myself to survive on less than four hour’s sleep daily, or i have to stop taking on more freelance jobs. or i have to work more efficiently, like an optimized car with high mileage per gallon. or i have to find a way to make each day stretch to more than 24 hours. which one will it be?

last week was jan’s U8, the eighth of the 12 or so prescribed periodic medical examinations for children and teens here in germany. he passed all tests, was even bored at some points of the question-and-answer portion. instead of giving straight answers, he would sometimes say, “but everyone knows that!” when asked if he could count, i gritted my teeth and hoped he wouldn’t give the answer he gave me before: “in what language?”

i swear, i don’t know where he got that cheekiness.

by habit, we don’t start with our christmas decorations here before the first advent, and unlike in the philippines, the tree is usually set and adorned two or three days before christmas (and not in september!). but in light of recent developments, this year will be an exception. i plan to unearth the tinsel and all-that-glitters this weekend and make the flat all christmassy. with the days getting shorter (today it was pitch black by 5 pm), i need the twinkling lights and festive ribbons to chase the literal and figurative shadows away. i might even get a plastic tree.

i know. i’m in denial. but what else can i do? wallow in grief? there’s enough time for that later. we’ve been granted time. time we should spend being the happiest we can be.

for as long as i can remember sleep has always been my comforter when faced with problems, exams, and other unwanted stuff. when i’m troubled or stressed, i get sleepy. pretty inconvenient, frustrating even to me, but it’s a self-protective instinct, i think.

if sleep fails, procrastination rears its head. i am a champion at putting off doing things i must, but hate, to do, whether its something as mundane as pressing the laundry, or as vital as a trip to the gynecologist. over the years i have also developed the habit of turning a blind eye, a deaf ear, to things that don’t please me. if i can’t change it, i simply pretend it doesn’t exist, and focus instead on the things i opt to see through my rose-colored lenses. i go along my merry way and ignore unpleasant things, places, events… even people.

on one hand, this is, as i’ve said, self-protection. as a result, i seldom get affected by negative things, or more accurately said, by things that i perceive as negative. on the other hand, it’s a sort of escapist’s trick. like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand in the face of danger. instead of confronting the issue, i back off and recoil into my shell, a comfortable world impenetrable to things that are beyond what i am wiling and able to handle.

i know this isn’t productive, but at least i’m not being destructive.

how do YOU cope with unpleasant stuff?

over the course of the past year or so, i have experimented a number of ways to monetize this blog. installed ads, removed them, installed something else, took them down after a few months. at the moment, i am even considering ridding of the google ads. the clutter is just not worth the few cents some ad programs are generating. after all, it’s not like my personal life generates as much buzz and interest as the other blogs i write about. and the 10 or so loyal visitors i have are apparently either immune to advertisements, or too lazy to be bothered to click on them

of all programs i’ve tried, i like text link ads best. the ad(s) are comparatively discreet, and requires nothing from readers for me to earn. i bet a lot of you don’t even recognize the lone text link ad on this blog, unless you purposely look for it.

this week, the owners of text link ads launched a new program enabling bloggers to earn a few bucks from their personal blogs: ReviewMe.

how does it work? simply put, advertisers will ask you to review their website/service/whatever, and you get paid for posting your review in your blog. in the same way that advertisers get to choose which bloggers they will offer the job to, bloggers also get to choose which offers they’d like to take on. if you don’t like the offers you get, no pressure, you don’t have to do anything. should you eventually accept an offer, you get paid a fee which depends on your blog’s popularity or traffic. for writing this review of reviewme, for example, i’m supposed to earn $30 (let’s see if it materializes come paytime).

what i like best about reviewme is that they even tell you to indicate that you are writing for $ in exchange. that means, your regular readers won’t be puzzled when you write about something totally out of sync to the normal fare you write about. i have written reviews before — books, hotels, foodstuff, etc– without getting paid for any of it. now that there’s reviewme, why should i say no to a chance of getting paid for my opinion?

for some weird reason, i’ve been crying halfway through this video. maybe i just need one, too.

find out more here.