Entire Blogosphere Stunned By Blogger's Special Weekend Post

NEW YORK—In what is being called a seminal moment in Internet history, a rare weekend post by 25-year-old blogger Ben Tiedemann on his website bentiedemanntellsall.blogspot.com rocked the 50 million-member blogosphere this Saturday. The landmark post, which updated nearly every member of the global online community on the shelf Tiedemann was building, was linked to by several thousand sites, including Daily Kos, Digg, and The New York Times. "Wow, what a special treat this was for all of us," said Talking Points Memo head blogger Joshua Micah Marshal, who, along with all other bloggers, checks Tiedemann's site every day just in case something monumental occurs. "I thought I was going to have to wait until Monday to find out if Ben decided to put [the shelf] in his bedroom or the living room. The pictures were great, too." Within two hours of going live, Tiedemann's 15-word post received 34,634,897 comments.

(Editors note: We all have to laugh at this sarcasm . . . it's a must).

What's the good one?

Did You Know. . . ?

Did you know that it takes 3 - 4L of water to make 1L of bottled drinking water? It takes approx. 3L of water to make the plastic for the bottle and 1L to fill it. (It also takes about 17 million barrels of oil to make the 8 billion gallons of bottled water we drink a year, this is not including the energy it takes to cool and transport water).

Now, I am not preaching on this blog site; I am known to drink from the bottle (of water of course) when I run out of pre-filled tap water bottles on my long car drives for work -- I just found this an interesting and disturbing fact.

This is a country that is addicted to bottled water, yet we have abundant clean drinking water that we use to wash our clothes with, flush our toilets with, and water our yards with (I love watering my yard. I feel like I am feeding life. I also like to flush my toilet, however, I grew up in the 70's, remember "if it's yellow. . ."? I think I developed a natural concern for potable water from that experience), and I wish I could gather up some of this fresh, clean water and ship it to impoverished children who are drinking out of a ditch.

Want more info. on the state of our water, choose Fresh Air, Nov. 27th (I was unable to make a direct link to this program)? Want good news? People as a whole are using less water per person than we have in the past ten years thanks to more efficient appliances.

Party On

(Photos by whomever was holding the camera at the time).

No occasion is ever necessary for our good friends to get together, but if we have to find one, we always can. This time it was a 6 Way Birthday Party (six people we know had b-days in the months of Nov. and Dec.). Reminiscent of another good time? Let the good times roll. . .

There was a well dressed crowd.

And a cash cow of cupcakes.

Donna and Nate lived it up.

Donna's double was the life of the party as well (props by Jason A).

Hello Boys.

Hello girl (Molly most definitely did not down all these beverages by herself. She did provide some VERY tasty quiche however).

Crelly shaking things up!

Tony and Jason

Kate and Jason

Towards the end of the night the party moved outside for some musical entertainment provided by Scott and Kate. They rule. They all rule.

I'm Thankful For. . .

. . . celebrating secular Holidays, because I grew up not celebrating any Holidays.

I am thankful for celebrating this particular Holiday because two of my favorite things in this life are family and good food -- and there you have it, Thanksgiving gives us both. (From left, my lovely niece Brooke, my lovely daughter Hannah, and my Dad Joe).

Have I mentioned that my lovely sis, Stephanie, can do fabulous things with a table? (This year Thanksgiving was held at my lovely sister Rochelle's house.)

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and were able to enjoy the things, people, tastes etc. that you are thankful for. I hope you, and I, and everyone we know are able to be thankful for these things all year round! (p.s. I am also thankful for getting to fall asleep on the couch after dinner and escape the dishes -- slacker! At home I don't get to do that).

Boys

Cole had friends spend the night last night. I think I need a padded basement room if we are all going to survive Cole's teen years. (The cat scratching post and a mattress were involved in these acrobatics. Other antics were recorded on the family camera [a very useful tool to have accessible], but I won't mention them on this blog site out of respect for those who have not hit this stage of child development with their children yet. We'll just say it included flames and an old cell phone. Busted!). Around 3:00 am, with me in a very light sleep haze, and after repeated demands, I had to turn into mean mom to stop the shenanigans. . .

Oh My Daaarling Clementine

Photo from the world wide web

We are so lucky to have such a beautiful canyon in our backyard. People come from all around to ride and hike on the trails that we can just walk out our front doors to and head out on (like when I want to take a break from work. No stale coffee and boring co-worker chatter in a stuffy break room for me!).

Yesterday I rode my bike on the Clementine Loop. It's a 9 mile trail with about a 1,500 ft. elevation climb at the beginning. A moderately hard climb up is followed by a raucous (very fun!) ride back down, over rocks, over bumps, through a tunnel and around twisting trail. Towards the end of the ride, the trail follows along side the river, which is precariously about 30 ft. immediately below. Not a lot of room for error, but exhilarating. Yeehaaaaa!

Everything's Coming Up Lemons

This is the first year the lemon tree has produced lemons -- and they are beautiful and fragrant. I believe the lemon tree has been in the backyard quite a while, but I only discovered it a few years ago. You see, when I first rented this house ten and a half years ago, thinking I was only going to live here temporarily, maybe six months or so, the backyard was so overgrown that one plant meshed into another -- it looked like a jungle. But still, the backyard was one of the main reasons I decided to take this fixer-upper. It had magic in it (and some cool rock work that a former owner, a brick mason, had created).

Seven and a half years after renting, circumstances lead me to buying the house and I threw myself into fixing it up, inside then out. Slowly I worked away at the yard -- and with one afternoon of an able bodied yard maintenance crew -- there was rhyme and reason to that space. And a lemon tree. I watered and fertilized the tree for the next two years and behold:

After the night's pouring rain, the lemons are heavy with moisture, (don't think me sick, but) somewhat resembling udders that would let down lemonade (click on photo). I guess with this house, I have made lemonade out lemons . . .

Let It Snow?

With no snow on the horizon, Cole has taken to snowboarding in the house the past few days. The weather could not be more perfect lately (sunny and 72), however, for mountain biking and hiking, and that is what I have been doing -- daily if possible. Besides working (lightly) and the necessary household chores, I have been trying to spend every possible moment in the canyon. Sorry no photos, I always forget my camera, always too eager when running out the door to the arms of my loved one -- The American River Canyon. It also helps to have a fantastic mt. bike partner -- skn.

I am, however, anticipating this perfect weather will not hold out much longer. Hopefully not, we need snow if I am going to reclaim the living room.