Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto
by Tricia
Just a quick reminder to everyone that Shelly will be backing her bags in a few hours and leaving the nice room I rented to her. She’s been a great room-mate. I could hear her typing away on her keyboard every now and then, and commenting while watching American Idol, and Grey’s Anatomy, but that’s about it.
So go stop by her room and say good-bye before she leaves. 🙂
by Tricia
I had some tough decisions to make when choosing this weeks renter!
Thanks to all that put a bid in to rent my little room. I think a couple of you have bid in the past too! Please keep trying, as I will pick you soon.
BTW – To all that have been commenting on my injury … the latest comments mostly say “glad you are feeling better” I’m not sure where you are getting that from because I’m absolutely miserable.
by Tricia
I didn’t have as many entries to the Pupsickle contest as I thought I would. Several people left lovely comments, but few entered, so I have decided to reward all who choose to play the game.
Runner Up- Suki wins 25 credits
2nd place winner – Writewingnut wins 50 credits
1st place winner – Swibiruntn wins 100 credits
Enjoy your winnings! Too bad it isn’t cash, eh?
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Mini-Update on my injury (see last post if you need to catch up!):
I didn’t feel as bad as I thought I would when I got up Friday morning. Perhaps it was because my jaw was relatively still while I slept or maybe I still had some pain killers running through my system. The latter is most likely as I dosed myself very well before I finally went to bed.
Throughout the day my jaw and chin became more painful, and I also noticed other aches and pains that weren’t making themselves known Thursday night. My left thigh, left shoulder and my abdomen all hurt too. I get a lot of pain if I try to raise my left arm to shoulder level.
Oh and I was confused when I wrote the last post! Actually I was confused even when I was in the hospital. I kept telling everyone that my left jaw and ear hurt worse than the other side. Well, duh, it’s the right side I kept pointing to and cradling. I hope the Dr. and x-ray tech realized that I meant the right side was the worse of the two and didn’t think that I was just demonstrating the pain of my left jaw by pointing to and touching the right.
My RIGHT ear really hurts, or maybe it’s my jaw where it joins the skull- the Temporal mandibular joint. If I move my jaw side to side, try to make my upper and lower teeth touch, push my chin in or out it hurts the most in that area. Oh and I sneezed three times on Friday and almost screamed in pain each time. My ear or something very close to it pops loudly and painfully when I sneeze. My ear still has the full congested feeling too, even though my hearing on that side seems normal. If this doesn’t calm down over the weekend I’m going to have to get it checked out.
by Tricia
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.
by Tricia
I’m starting to wonder if bl0gging is just a waste of my time. I don’t mean bl0gging itself. I enjoy writing. It’s all the other stuff that’s making me feel this way.
I’m spending so much time surfing to earn credits that I’m not getting much else done. What am I earning credits for? So that people can look at my site for 20 to 30 seconds? Are they reading it? Some are, but probably most aren’t.
I’m also spending time looking for places to “buy space” from. In the past three days I’ve put in an amazing 29 bids to buy space on other sites for a week for this site and my other site – Odd Planet. Of those 29 bids, perhaps 22 bids were for this site. I managed to secure 2 spots. Neither of them for Tricia’s Musings.
The whole point of “buying space” on someones site is so that your own bl0g can get a few more visitors. Ones who actually mean to come and visit so that they can see what your site is about. So I spend some time checking on the sites that I bid on.
There is no way that I’m giving someone 50 of my hard earned credits if they have a past history of their renter only getting one or two hits for the whole week. Especially if they didn’t even mention their renters site at least in passing to try to get their visitors to see the site. If I like a site, and it gets at least 5 visitors for every 20 credits they charge to rent space, and has at least a one line mention of their renters site I’ll put a bid in.
So, as you can see, to have put 29 bids on sites in the past three days takes me some time because I really check each site out carefully. Then to not even get one bid accepted for this site, well, that makes me feel like I’m wasting my time.
This also makes me feel like my bl0g isn’t good enough. I know that’s probably not the case. The sites I’m bidding on are getting more than just one bid, and unfortunately Tricia’s Musings just isn’t being chosen. 22 times in a row. Still it does make me wonder if there is something wrong about this blog that I’m just not picking up on yet.
To add to this feeling I’ve had a run of bad luck on the Battle of the Bl0gs lately too. When I first changed this sites theme a week or so ago I started winning battles for the first time. Strange isn’t it? The content didn’t change but look did and suddenly my site was a winner. However my luck changed again. I’ve been putting both my sites in battles the last two or three days and I think I’ve only won twice.
Between losing my bids and battles, and spending a very large chunk of time surfing to earn more and more credits, I’m starting to ask myself just what am I doing.
Is it worth it? Am I getting any regular readers by doing all of this?
Perhaps I’ll just sit on my nice big pile of credits and stop trying to give them away to other sites for a small piece of their bl0g.
Does anyone else feel this way from time to time?