It wasn’t hard to pick my latest renter Pupsickle. Erin lives in the land of the midnight sun and I enjoy reading about life in her beautiful frozen land. If you look through her site you’ll find some great pictures of Alaska’s ice sculpture contest, her dancing dog, vacation pictures and so much more. I like the way Erin writes about life. I particularly enjoyed one of her recent posts “Things I know for sure” . It’s humorous, and I’m sure we can all related to a few of the items on her list.

Contest:

I’ll give you a little incentive to visit Erin’s site, although I think that when many of you get there and actually start reading her site you won’t really need the push.

Visit Pupsickle and then send me an e-mail telling me what vegetable she loves to torture her husband with, and your bl0gmad user name. My e-mail can be found in the upper left hand column under “about me”.

**Hint** read her post titled: Update (March 21, 06)

On Friday March 31st, I will put all the names of those who have entered, and given the correct answer, into a hat and randomly select THREE winners.

If you are not already a member of bl0gmad please click on one of the links above and go register. You’ll get a lot of hits to your site and will likely get some regular readers as a result of joining the site so it’s a win win situation.

Thank you for all of the comments on my last post. I believe it’s a site record! Just to be clear though- I love writing and I have been enjoying the bl0gging format and it’s ease of use. As one of my commenters put it- it’s “the peripheral side of blogging” that got to me. I know visitors and regular readers will eventually come even if I don’t surf my brains out at all the traffic sites. it’ll just take a lot longer.

I just got a little bit down because I’ve been spending so much time doing the “peripheral” activities that it started to take away from my enjoyment of actually writing new posts for my site. I too have found some great sites while surfing on the various traffic engines and I wouldn’t have found them if I hadn’t have been surfing. There are pro’s and con’s to everything and I suppose yesterday I was seeing and feeling more of the negative side, perhaps more than I ever had before.

I’ve also been feeling absolutely horrid the past three or four days and that has got me more than a little down. BTW it takes a LOT to get me down. As my few regular readers might know I have Crohn’s disease which is an inflammatory bowel disease. It’s painful, life changing, occasionally embarrassing, and sometimes life threatening, and on top of that it’s name sucks!

I’ve been in so much pain of the last few days that I’ve taken more pain medicine than I ever have in the past. Mind you, thanks to my doctors stupidity I’ve only had pain medicine available to me for the last two months but that’s another rant.

Anyway- I think I have another partial bowel obstruction. I’m a nurse- I know the signs, and I’ve experienced it several times in the past so I’m pretty sure that’s what is going on. I also know from both my work and my past experience that unless it gets really bad or becomes a total blockage that if I were in the hospital they would mainly pump be full of I.V. fluids, perhaps up the meds I’m already taking and just keep an eye on me. I might be being both a stupid nurse and a stupid patient right now but I am NOT going to the hospital. Not yet. If it gets worse I definitely will. It’s just two blocks away.

One pro of having this problem- perfect way to lose weight. I’m living on water and broth right now. One con- PAIN!

I’m mainly only telling you guys this because:

1. it helps explain my mindset from yesterday a little bit better.

2. There is a chance that I might have to go to the hospital and if I do I will likely be admitted. This could delay the contest that I’ve just started. Don’t worry- I’ll draw names when I return if that happens. But it won’t – right?

3. This is my bl0g and while I really don’t want to make it a Crohn’s or “living with pain” bl0g, I am going to talk about what I’m going through on occasion mostly because this disorder has become my life in the last year and a half. In fact I just got put off work for another four months as a result of what I’m going through. So every once in a while I’m likely going to bring it up.

Ok, enough of that! Check back late this afternoon or sometime this evening. I made an interesting discovery Friday evening and I’d like to share it with my readers.