This was the creation that I submitted for the Cocoa Swap 2 Marshmallow Contest. It had to be made of only marshmallows and toothpicks (check!) and it had to have some sort of yarn content (knitted speedo! check!). Here is the scenario I set up:

And I found out earlier today at the Cocoa Blog, that I won! Aww thanks everyone who voted for my Marshmallow Diver.

I’ve been working on getting the blog “out there”… and I am shocked and just how many damn social networking sites are out there! I transferred my blog from Feedburner to Feedburner-owned-by-Google, and included a little “readers” button… now I think it’s broken because sometimes it says 24, and othertimes it says 56. I hope it’s 56! I also added a plug-in for the blog called Social Bookmarking Reloaded and they have so many options for sites to “share with”. I only selected the ones I knew, but holy crap, look at this list!

Del.icio.us   | digg   | FURL   | reddit   | Technorati  | Newsvine   | Ma.gnolia   | Google Bookmarks   | Squidoo   | Netvouz   | Blogmarks   | Scuttle   | Tailrank   | OKnotizie   | Bookmark.it   | Linkagogo   | Socialdust   | SlashDot   | Diggita   | FaceBook   | Wikio |   Barrapunto   | Kipapa   | Blogmemes   | Blogsvine | Scoopeo  | ZicZac  | IndianPad  | Technotizie   | Diggitsport  | Leonaut | Tipd  | blinklist   | Feed Me Links  | Yahoo My Web  | Socializer  | Stumble Upon  | RawSugar  | BlinkBits  | Rojo  | Co.mments  | Bloglines  | Segnalo  | Netscape  | Ask  | Delirious  | Live-MSN  | Sphinn  | Seotribu  | Upnews  | Health Ranker  | NotizieFlash | Fai informazione  | BlogSphere News  | Mixx  | MySpace  | Plimsocial  | Twitter  | BlueDot  | Connotea  | Mister-Wong  | Social Bookmarking Reloaded

Some of them I know to be outdated (Netscape) and others I assume are country-specific (Fai informazione), but some I’ve never heard of before! There must be people using them… because they obviously exist… but how many social networking sites does one person (or blog) need?!

Other things I’ve done have been “claiming” my blog on Technorati, which sort of makes sense so far. I signed up for StumbleUpon (still don’t really understand that one) and I don’t really get LinkedIn or Del.icio.us either. If anyone can shed some light on those, that’d be great.

I’m on Facebook the most often… and that is definitely a personal account but I use it for work too because FB doesn’t like duplicate accounts. I am now on Twitter, although I don’t really understand why it is fun for personal accounts. I can see how it would be excellent for events and news and all that. I’ve got Twitter for two of our projects at work because they’re community/arts/literary events.

To be dead honest, I’m starting to feel drained by Social Media. I was thinking after driving home after saying goodbyes to Ruth and her husband that I hadn’t done anything social-media-related all day and I felt such a big weight lifted off my shoulders. Maybe I get too worried about being “connected” or “in the loop”… but I don’t like getting left out. I know that blogging is a form of Social Networking… but it’s a lot more personalized than a 140-character limit for messages about what you’re doing.

The 81st Annual Academy Awards are just around the corner (this Sunday, February 22) and I’m gearing up to put in my votes! Every year, with my friends Nigel and Deepinder, we cast our votes for who will win the Oscars. Oddly we’ve never watched together but we definitely should one year. I’m interested to hear people’s opinions and votes for the Oscars. Unfortunately I don’t have time to make all the polls, so how about just Best Picture?

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I have seen a few of the movies nominated for various awards at this years’ 81st Annual Academy Awards. My favourites were Slumdog Millionaire and The Reader. I’ve made my predictions on their official ballot (PDF download on the website) and I’ll let you know how well I do!

If you already follow Ruth’s blog, you’ll know that she recently went on vacation and ended up in my neck of the woods. Well that opportunity couldn’t pass us by without meeting up for some knitting, chatting, and sight-seeing. Ruth got into town on Sunday night (exhausted I’m sure) and I had emailed some of my knitter friends to meetup at a local tea shop for knitting on Tuesday evening.

Unfortunately a number of people couldn’t make it due to illness and/or other obligations, but we still had a lovely time!

Here is Julia and Marianne (who met for the first time, but I knew each individually).

And here is Ruth and myself.

I found this teacup in an antiques store earlier this week. I know Ruth uses and collects them so I got it for her as a Vancouver souvenir. My sister told me “Royal Albert” is one I want to look for. This particular pattern is called Lavender Rose (odd since it’s quite pink), but it was one of the nicest teacup-and-saucer sets that I found in the store.

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Warning: I’m going to rant, but I’m not going to name names or link sites.

I recently joined a local group that has meetups. The focus of these meetups is tea. Our last organizer went AWOL, and so I was very excited when the new Organizer stepped up! I would have myself ages ago except it costs to become an Organizer, it’s free to just be a member. Anyway, I messaged the new organizer expressing an interest in meetups around local tea shops and cafes in Vancouver. I included website links and several location suggestions just incase the Organizer wasn’t from Vancouver proper. I got the most infuriating response back… and when I read it at work, I actually said out loud: “Tea snob!”

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