Saturday, April 3, 2010

One Person

One person

Rules: Choose one person - either someone you know personally or you know of - and answer the following questions. Post the results on Facebook or on your blog & let people guess who it is.
  • Is the person male or female?

    Female
  • Is this person one of your facebook friends / famous / other?

    Famous
  • What facial feature do you think of first when you think of this person?

    Nose, I guess
  • What game would you choose to play with this person?

    Not sure
  • Where would you choose to eat dinner with this person?

    Fancy kosher restaurant - doesn't matter which
  • How long could you stand being on a desert island with this person?

    Don't know her personally, so I am not sure.
  • What color looks best on this person?

    Black.
  • Does this person have a skill or talent you envy? If so, which?

    Yes. She is a very talented singer.
  • Do you feel this person knows you as well as you know him or her?

    I am positive she doesn't know I exist.
  • What is the nicest thing you have heard this person say?

    Can't think of anything...
Here's who I've tagged.
Rona of DrSavta, Leah of triLcat Talks
Click here to fill in this meme
sleeQo

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Five Fives

In case you've missed it, I'm promoting sleeQo, a new service that helps you create content for your blog. The more people who join, the easier it's going to be for us to target the memes (questionnaires) to what people want... We're still not ready for heavy traffic, but we need more than what we've got to get a feel for what people need.

Anyway, what I'd really like from anyone who ever gets stuck without content is to try it out & see what you think (feel free to let me know by email or in the comments). Go to the "fill in a meme" page where you can choose a popular meme, a recent meme or by category. Fill it in & post it on your blog (it's better if you register beforehand, but you don't have to register). Leave a link to your blog in the comments of this post & I'll send you a random piece of brand new jewelry from my collection (or you can choose genuine pearl earrings, since I've got quite a few of them). Once you've posted the link, send me an email to rachelinbar at gmail.com with your address & I'll mail it out to you. Easy enough, right?

Thanks!

Five fives

Rules: Answer each of the five questions below with five answers. Tag 5 people to do the same.
  • Five things you would do if you were a billionaire.

    Buy a new house for us and for any of my close family members who want/need one, travel often, give money to charities I believe in, buy a new car, get good investment advice
  • Five things you did yesterday.

    Worked, gave Yirmi a bath, cut a salad, watched Law & Order (special victims unit), talked to Hadas
  • Five jobs you would rather do than your own (if salary and qualifications were not an issue).

    A writer (fiction, not technical writing, thank you very much), high level consulting (never have to do the detailed design, just oversee it), brainstormer, artist, bargain-hunter (is that a job?)
  • Five snacks you wish were calorie-free.

    Popcorn, cashews, chocolate, potato chips, pretzels
  • Five things that make you happy.

    My husband, my kids, quiet, doing things that are creative, designing something really awesome
Everyone tagged Click here to fill in this meme
Sleeqo

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Being a grown-up

I remember way back, when I got married the first time (yes, it really was in 1989 - scary, I know) thinking about what makes the transition from being a child to being a grown up. One of the things I couldn't do then was just get in a car without planning exactly where I was going. Every turn stressed me out. (I'd gotten a license right before I turned 18, but was living in Israel alone, so I didn't have a chance to drive until after I got married and we bought an automatic car.) So that was one thing... I don't remember the others - perhaps being able to buy toilet paper without feeling embarrassed... or being able to go for a medical procedure alone. I think it was an issue for me because I was always really independent. I boarded in Atlanta, 2-1/2 hours away from home, from the time I was 12. That meant getting on a Greyhound bus, ending up downtown alone, getting on a bus to school, etc. (And downtown Atlanta was pretty scary for a really shrimpy 12-year-old.) Then, when I was 16, I came to Israel in early June - for a vacation - and stayed nearly 25 years (so far). That was back in the days before cell phones. When you'd make a call from a pay phone just because it was available. And when international calls were $4 a minute AND you had to go to the international calling center behind the main post office (where you sat in a weird little booth and heard your money beep away faster than you thought possible). So, was that being grown up? Being married certainly isn't what does it... (I am not sure my ex will EVER qualify as a grown-up in my book...) So, at the young age of 40, aside from when certain-people-who-will-remain-nameless-but-don't-read-this-blog-or-know-of-its-existence-anyway start trying to tell me how to run my life, I definitely feel like a grown-up (though I've also done a good job of keeping in touch with my inner child - see my jewelry collection as proof :-)) and, as I mentioned in the previous post, my brother Ben and I developed sleeQo - a meme tool that allows you to come in, fill-in the meme of your choice & post it on your blog or on Facebook (or send it by email... whatever you want) - and I'm currently responsible for putting in the initial memes (so people will have what to fill-in when they come visit our site or when we send out the subscription newsletters).

Here are my answers to the "grown up" meme (pronounced meem):

You're a grown up when...

Rules: List 5 things that make you qualify as an adult... Tag 5 *adults* to do the same :-)
  1. You can drive and park a car - and even find it once you're ready to go...
  2. You can sit at a table in a restaurant alone and not feel awkward.
  3. You feel like you know what you should do in most situations - and know who to ask when you're not sure.
  4. You know that things that seem like "the end of the world" usually aren't.
  5. You care whether your clothes are wrinkled or not - enough to iron them or choose something else to wear.
Everyone tagged Click here to fill in this meme
Sleeqo

p.s. to paste your completed meme into Facebook, go into your Notes, press "Write a new note" and then paste in the HTML - we've made it Facebook friendly.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

New tool for bloggers

Negative

Rules: Answer as honestly as you can. Tag 3 people.
  • A smell I hate

    Lentils cooking.
  • Least favorite day of the week...and why

    Thursday, because it means it's almost Friday (but then when Friday comes, I remember all of its disadvantages...)
  • TV shows I'll never watch

    Almost all reality shows. Most sports. Political talk shows... I don't really like TV that much.
  • Food I refuse to eat

    Pineapple (although I will taste fresh pineapple once every few years, only if it's very cold)
  • Bug I can't stand

    Cockroach
  • Computer software I use (but hate)

    Rivhit (Israeli accounting software)- terrible UI
  • Chore I really dislike

    I don't mind chores too much in general, but I don't enjoy changing the sheets on top bunk.

I tag: Rona, Leah, Vicki, Anita

fill in this meme
Sleeqo

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Funniest experiences meme

Funniest experiences

Rules: Fill in the following. Tag 4 friends to do the same.
  • My funniest dream

    I once dreamt I gave someone a wedding present that was a tablecloth & they found a spoon inside it. They later called to ask if the spoon had been used for dairy or meat (because they were keeping it).
  • My funniest experience with a pet

    Can't think of one at the moment.
  • My funniest experience at a job interview

    Finding out that the interviewer knows one or more of my siblings.
  • My funniest purchase

    Some of the useless jewelry I buy on eBay?
  • My funniest experience in high school

    High school was NOT funny. Although perhaps the strangest was taking apart my test in history and handing the pages out to the class because I felt so bad for them that they were so stupid they'd never pass without my help. (12th, grade at Eisenhower High in Lawton Oklahoma)
  • My funniest cooking experience

    Gosh. I need to start remembering the funny stuff.
  • The funniest thing I ever said to anyone

    This one's easy. One day I was in a store and someone looked at Lilach and said she looked Japanese. She then proceeded to ask me if her father is Japanese - and I, being distracted, answered "I don't know"... (Um. No. He's not.)
Here's who I've tagged.
Rona, Leah, Bethami, Anyone who wants to :-)
fill in this meme
Sleeqo

Monday, March 8, 2010

What I've been up to

One of the things I've been doing is working with my amazingly talented brother, Ben, on a new meme site named sleeQo. It's a tool to help bloggers who get stuck without things to write about. It can give you a daily or weekly push in the right direction. You get to be the very first to see it (currently in what can only be called pre-beta...) Actually, this is the first test post :-)

My travels


Fill in the following questions & tag 5 friends (try friends who travel a lot).

  • My best trip ever...
    Normandy and Brittany with Ohad in September 2002. Totally amazing :-)

  • My worst trip ever...
    They all had their high points. Hard to think of one as bad.

  • Most important thing I ever lost on a trip...
    Nothing I can think of.

  • Most important thing I ever forgot to take on a trip...
    Conditioner?

  • Thing I miss most when I'm away...
    Ohad (unless he's with me). If Ohad's with me then cooked food...

  • Thing I miss least when I'm away...
    Screaming and tripping on toys.

  • Favorite travel partner...
    Ohad. Definitely.

  • Place I hope to travel to someday...
    Portugal, China, and maybe some tropical islands.

Here's who I've tagged.



Sleeqo


Your comments are welcome!

Monday, December 7, 2009

I'd like to thank...

My loyal readers who come back day-after-day to check why I haven't written anything new. It's probably because I'm either insanely busy, severely disorganized or a combination of the two. I kind of wonder if it's what people describe as ADD. Sometimes I feel like there's a seven-ring circus going on in my head (three rings I could handle, I mean, I do have 6 kids...) and everything's so interesting and so colorful and appealing that I don't know what to do first... On a good day, the solution is to shut everything down and work on the things I have to work on (you know, the stuff that brings in the soy schnitzel). On a not-so-good day, I start doing seven different things and sometimes, miraculously, I am able to stay focused on one thing long enough to realize I've worked on it. I have learned not to rely on my memory too much (to do things) because I forget just about everything that isn't very important... So we've got a calendar on the fridge and I write down everything that's going on and I do remember to look there (at least usually).


Anyway, I've got a whole bunch of ideas that I'm trying to develop - one's a spin-off site of fertilitystories. I bought a new domain, but now I want to build a content management system so that at least one of my websites will actually be built properly. But since I don't like risk, I haven't taken someone else to build it for me - and I don't have the time to build it myself... I've also continued to work on internationalshippingshops (do I have a thing about long mushed-up names? For this one, I bought the domain OverseasJoe, which for some odd reason I think is hilarious...) and it's actually starting to get some traffic. I'm also an affiliate of Book Depository... oh yeah, and my brother, Ben, and I started building a really cool site about a year ago - only Ben got a real job in the meantime and decided that money was more important than helping his sister (can you imagine? ;-)) so that's a bit stuck too (although I've got an idea up my sleeve to get it jumpstarted again)... And, in the meantime, I decided that I had to design something that kids could make for Chanuka that would let you turn a wheel and have the Chanukiya light up the right number of candles according to the day of Chanuka. You can't see it that well, but when you turn the dial on the bottom then through the holes you can see the 'lit candles' that correspond with the number on the top. Hadas decorated this one :-)

And then we hosted a "Bayit cham" where 4 kids from the preschool come over in the afternoon and you do some sort of activity with them - so we made these (and used my fancy new laminating machine, which made them very impressive, but also impossible to photograph). Amazingly *all*of them came out well. This is the first time I've ever planned something so complicated and it was really exciting to see the results.

When I say complicated, I mean the bottom part looks like this:

After getting good feedback on it from pretty much everyone, I am going to look into selling the design - anyone want to test it for me? I can send you a pdf...

I'm also taking my next-to-last course at the Open University - Survey Methodology - it's a great course, but requires a lot of time (doesn't everything?) - and I think I've decided not to sign up for next semester. With Hadas being in 11th grade, I still have a chance to finally get my degree at the same time as she does... (I have to write 2 seminar papers, so I plan to write one during the spring semester this year and one next year, after I take the final course.) This degree really isn't going to give me anything, but it is really important to me to finish things I've started... Uh oh, which takes me back up to the first paragraph and all the things I want to do.

Hey, I managed to get through writing a blog post today. That's something.