So this is the new year…

I have a number of random things to throw out there, so this post will be in numbered list form.

1. An awesome time was had by all at the Lowest of the Low New Year’s Eve show at Town Ballroom. See Jen’s post. Many thanks to Jen and Chuck for dragging us out! If you haven’t already seen it on Facebook, lookit this cute pic:

TB

Awww…

During the show, I tweeted that “Salesmen Cheats and Liars” just wasn’t the same without Lawrence, and he responded by calling me a “doll.” Teehee.

Most awesome exchange between Jen and me during this concert, while the band is playing the song “Winter Sleepers” from Sordid Fiction:

Jen: I don’t like this song.

Me: (shrug) It reminds me of…

Jen: X (code for my ex-bf)! I KNOW! I read something on the Internet today that reminded me of him…Oh, I know…it was a Yahoo article about how not to break up with someone.

Me: *laughs for 10 minutes*

2. I am back to school. I have a ginormous pile of grading to do that I did not do over break that I am procrastinating doing by writing this blog post.

3. I went to the GYM today.

4. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t spend a lot of time here these days. Here’s a list of other places, complete with links, I can be found online:

Please feel free to follow/friend/whatever me in those places… 🙂

5. I tend to not make resolutions as such, but I’ve been making an effort to be a healthier/happier/less stressed me, and plan to step that up in the coming year. There may be more on this later, unless I get too busy, which is highly likely.

6. I read 47 books in 2011, which is just short of my usual 50 or so…I started reading a 48th, but am not yet finished with it. I was feeling some mild guilt about this, but then I said, “Wait a minute…this is silly.” So I’ve decided that my only reading “goal” for 2012 is to enjoy as many books as I can and not allow myself to feel one second of stress over something I do for fun.  See #5.

7. I think I posted here something like…8 times in 2011? While there’s a part of me that would like to post more, well, see #5 and #6.

8. On that note, I should find something productive to do…happy 2012!

Poking my head out for a moment

1. School is going well. Busy, of course…but not in a bad way. I have taken on some new responsibilities this year that eat up a little more of my time (junior class moderator, trying to get a creative writing club off the ground), but am generally enjoying it all.

2. I am already hopelessly behind on grading. I think I just have to accept the fact that I will never be at zero.

3. Schedule makes it hard to find social time, me time, even internet time beyond scanning mail/twitter/facebook updates. Brain gets swiss-cheesy at times, so I apologize if I’ve neglected to answer a message!

4. Yet somehow managing to play Words with Friends on my new iPod. (join me! I’m eringoblog)

5. Have assigned my AP Lit classes an outside reading project. They have to read at least one AP-worthy book per quarter and complete a project. I am pledging to knock some books off of my to-read list by making time to read at least one of the listed books per quarter as well. The Namesake is first on my list.

6. Saw this excellent post on LJ which is what prompted me to log in and actually post. I’m going to do a linky, ala Kelly:

We love binaries because everything in our culture is set up around them. Light and dark, yin and yang, good and evil. But they are poison and lead inevitably to the worst one: us and them.

7. I STILL haven’t gotten around to writing proper reviews, but I’ve read two amazing books by my dear, dear friend (and Campbell Award Winner!) Seanan McGuire:

FEED (as Mira Grant), and An Artificial Night. Both were amazing, and I can’t recommend them highly enough. 🙂

8. I don’t remember what number 8 was. Maybe another time.

Contest update

Sorry, folks. I was out of commission there for a while, and I’ve been desperately trying to get caught up with life.

Rand and I will have to confer on the blog name possibilities. I will make an effort to do that this weekend. If we don’t choose one, I will draw a random winner on Monday, May 18. (Oh, and if there’s anyone out there who still wants to participate, let me know. I could probably be persuaded to accept some late entries.)

I have lots of things to say, and very little energy/motivation to say them. So on that note…onward to Friday!

BufBloPoFo Day 13

BufBloPoFo Topic for Day 13

Holy crap you guys! Tomorrow is The Last Day Eve! YOU CAN DO IT.

I was going to finish with this question like last year, but decided I’d use it for day 13 instead. Link to whatever you posted exactly one year ago (or whatever’s closest), and give your readers an update on that topic. If you haven’t been writing for a year, give us a list of three or four things that are going on in your life right now that you’ll want to update one year from no

This is my post from the last day of BufBloPoFo last year. It is utterly unremarkable. 😉

In it, though, I did mention my wedding blog (no longer active, but still there).

And this is my post from one year ago today. It’s a list.

A year from now, I really, really hope to be in a permanent, full-time teaching position. And if all goes well, perhaps I will have produced some new, original prose. One can hope. 😉

Housecleaning

Not talking about my actual house, but about the blog…I want to change my template, but the thought of actually changing my template makes me want to die inside. I was thinking perhaps an exchange could be made…help with template in exchange for, oh, I dunno, cookies maybe?

I very seriously considered hopping to wordpress.com, until I discovered that eringoblog.wordpress.com is taken. By someone who is not using it. Meh.

I also need to clean up my sidebar. Let me know if I’ve got you linked and the link is broken or out-of-date, and I will be sure to fix it.

Thanks!

In other news, I am so far behind on so many things…I’m certainly going to enjoy my day off tomorrow! Hey, maybe I’ll even write an actual blog post with actual content. Later!

Whoooooooo are you?

I’d like to do a quick roll call. I’m interested in knowing who’s hanging out around erin-go-blog. If you could find it in your hearts to leave me a comment–doesn’t need to be anything profound–I’d greatly appreciate it.

It’d help me if you left me a working email address as well! (It doesn’t show publicly…I’m the only one who can see it!)

Bloggers in the news

Thank you for sharing: for women, blogs are becoming as essential as lipstick

Me, Jen, and jen14221 are all featured in an article in today’s Buffalo News.

Six Degrees of Bloggeration

A little while ago, I received an email from fellow TC editor Faith. The gist of it was something like this:

“As you may remember, I have the Big Ideas blog (bigideas4u.blogspot.com). A gal (Annemarie) I know was apparantly very inspired by my last idea, titled Six Degrees of Bloggeration. My idea as posted: “Someone should start a blog that will simply show us how many known blogs, in multiples of six, it would take to connect all the blogs in the blogosphere.” She suspects I am right, that we are all a lot more interconnected than we could imagine.”

So Annmarie picked six bloggers. Faith was one of those. And Faith picked six bloggers, and I was one of those. I’ve already left my comment and emailed my picks, but I wanted to share them with all of you:

1. All Things Jennifer
Jen is a real life friend–we’ve been friends since our first year of college. We were roommates for the subsequent three years. I moved to Buffalo because of her. Her blog is funny, honest, and always entertaining.

2. Superfluous Juxtaposition
Hilary is a Jewish gal who lives in LA. We connected because we were living somewhat parallel lives on opposite sides of the country. We turned 30 at the same time. 😉

3. Dispensing Happiness
Stephanie is a very old friend of mine. She’s a very active food blogger, and I love reading about what she’s cooking!

4. Byzantium’s Shores
Kelly is smart, interesting, and lots of fun to read. He writes about football (in season), pop culture, writing, and his family, among other things.

5. Silly Little Mischief
Linda is another blogging bride-to-be. She’s getting married a week after me!

6. Glitter for Brains
Lee is the most fabulous blogger in all of London. I discovered his blog through a mutual love of Alias.

There were lots of others I could have chosen, of course…I tried to find some variety, of location, subject, and so forth. I also tried to choose people I thought would be likely to participate. (of course, if you’d rather not, please let me know. I’ll choose someone else!)

Sidebar hackage

Bah. Looks like my sidebar has been the victim of some linkspam. I’ve alerted the proper authorities, and hopefully it will be dealt with soon. (technically, I suppose I could do it myself, but that would require a lot more time and energy than I want…)

UPDATE

It’s fixed, and I’ve been upgraded. My internet guys rock. 😀