Ramble Ramble

Um, holy traffic spike batman–where did all you guys come from? Seriously, my traffic doubled yesterday, which is awesome and all, but I feel like you guys must have landed on the wrong site by accident. Anyway, I hope some of you new folks stick around so we can get to know each other!

Anyway, because of my work nonsense I was never able to post anything here about Delurking Day (the internets tell me that Jan. 14th is Delurking Day, and who am I to argue with the internets?), so just like regular life, I’m late to the party. If you’re out there, I’d love to have you stop by and say hi! Tell me if you have a blog. Tell me a great veggie recipe you know (I need more veggies in my life). Tell me your thoughts on Project Runway’s season premiere (mine? show the damn clothes on the runway! We never get to see the clothes for more than about 15 seconds. How can I accurately argue with the judges from the safety of my couch if I can’t see what we’re arguing about???) Tell me whatever you want, just pop in! I don’t bite, I promise!

I’ve been MIA this week, thanks to being knocked on my ass by some sort of sickness on Monday and Tuesday. Cue high fevers and lots of sleep.

Of course, when I started feeling better, things kicked into high gear because getting sick 2 weeks before Christmas? After only 2 weeks back at work? Yeah, crazy pants. I haven’t even started my shopping (hello Sunday, I hear you calling), I desperately need to finish a few major things at work before the holidays, and oh yeah, I have family coming in town exactly 10 days from today. It’s the most wonderful time of the year and all.

But occasionally, it’s nice to take a little break and remember that I have a blog, and that I used to like to post here (oh, and hey, I used to get traffic here too!  Hi to the 5 of you that still read–love you tons!!), so I thought I’d have some fun with Google. Ah, yes, the ever popular “searches that brought people to this site” post! Enjoy!

The top searches lately are:  “husband is a douchebag”, “boyfriend is a douchebag”, “is my husband a douchebag?”, and my favorite “is it ok to call my husband a douchebag?” (and about 80 other iterations of the question/statement including douchebag). These all land on one of my favorite pregnancy posts: Signs your partner might be a douchebag (Childbirth class edition) . Of course, if you’re asking the Internet, I’m sure you already know the answer…

“Excuses for not voting” is another top contender, which references this post: Top 5 Excuses for Not Voting on November 4th. I guess people are always looking for a reason to not get involved, right?

“Why the Internet is bad for pregnant women” is one of my all-time favorites. I mean, I think the Internet should practically be banned while you’re pregnant, at least if you’re even a little bit into researching what could be happening, as it inevitably turns into “OMG your baby is going to DIE if you even think about having a single slice of deli meat.” Anyway, I think that search leads folks to 6 surprising things about pregnancy, all of which still surprise me even having gone through the whole shebang.

I’m willing to bet the people who are searching for “boobies” don’t get what they’re looking for here: i love boobies.

I’d like to hope that the people who search “crazy neighbors” don’t have the stories I do. For their own sakes! Crazy Neighbors

And, of course, I’m getting lots of c-section searches. Lots and lots and lots all asking about tips for c-section. I’m nothing if not helpful: Tips for c-section recovery.

And that includes on the blog. Yes, I know these kinds of posts are boring, but I promise it’ll be quick and painless. Ok, painless at least. And to make it even easier, we’ll start off with a couple of great contests going on around the blog world:

Enter the Oh How Lovely Shops Big Holiday Giveaway!

Jamie over at Oh How Lovely is having a huge holiday giveaway, featuring goodies from 15 different Etsy shops. Serious good stuff over there folks, and you should check it out! (um, or wait, don’t cuz then my odds of winning go down. Uh, forget I said anything!)

Next up, Stephanie from Those Corwins is having a giveaway for her birthday. Seems backwards to me, but who am I to argue, particularly when it means goodies of the manicure variety?

Now on to some personal housekeeping and a little self-promotion.

• It looks like the voting is still going on for the Lines challenge over at Exposaroonie. If you haven’t headed over there to look at the great shots yet, you should. And if you should feel like voting for mine, that wouldn’t make me sad! Also, the next challenge for Exposaroonie is due Saturday, December 13th–the challenge this time around is Texture, which should bring out some great images. If you’ve got a camera, you should submit a picture!
• N.C. still has Christmas cards for sale in his Etsy shop. And until December 15th, shipping is free on anything in the shop, and will be guaranteed for a pre-Christmas delivery (U.S. addresses only for the free part). If you’re still looking for cards or some unique Christmas gifts, you should check them out.
• I’m roaming the internet in various places. Should you need more of a fix, try looking for RambleRamble or me at Flickr, Twitter, 20 Something Bloggers, Technorati, or the forums for Chuck Westbrook’s Blog Project.

And finally, just a little reminder that you can read Ramble Ramble 3 ways

1. The first is by coming to the blog, where you can see the pretty header and all the lovely widgets and whatnot.
2. The second is by subscribing to the RSS feed, allowing for delivery of all my wittiness right in your very own reader. I don’t necessarily understand how RSS works, but I know that my Google Reader is my saving grace, seeing as how I currently am following about 165 blogs (a cut from 191 this weekend). If you’d like to sign up for the feed for RambleRamble, just click on that little orange button up there in the right hand column.
3. Lastly, if you’re not into the whole reader thing, you can also get my blog delivered in your email. Much like a reader it means you don’t have to visit the site every day, but instead will have everything delivered right to your email. I promise, no one else has access to your email and I won’t ever sell, rent, or give away your address. Subscribe to Ramble Ramble by Email

Todays guest post is brought to you by
Elizabeth
from
The Spotted Ottoman.
This is all part of the 20 Something Bloggers “Blog Swap 3″.
Don’t forget to go check out my post over on her site.

Hello! I am Elizabeth from The Spotted Ottoman, and I am so excited to have the chance to swap blogs with Ginger today, courtesy of 20SB. We decided to do a Top 10 list of photos that describe our lives because we both love photography and too many other things to really name.

Mine are completely unranked–the pictures are just in the order that they were displayed in iPhoto. Obviously this list is far from exhaustive; I just wanted to have some fun describing pictures I might not really use over on my blog. Here they are!

Adley
My then boyfriend (now husband) and I got Adley, a mini-dachshund over two years ago. I think getting him was one of our first real signs that we were in the relationship for the long haul. Adley immediately became a huge part of our lives, and has been with us for so many important things.

Books
I love reading (and more pathetically, studying things that aren’t even connected to school)–here are the shelves in our old home full of some of our books. My husband and I joke around that we could lose almost any of our possessions and be okay with it, but not our books. Give me my Nabokov or Hemingway (opposites, I know), and I will be happy for hours.

Buddha
Buddha is the cat I got while in middle school after one of my grandmother’s cats died. He still lives with my parents, and has adopted my little sister as his caretaker. I suppose you could say that Buddha paved the way for my eventual passion for animals. Isn’t he adorable?

(Attempted) Domesticity
I got married in March, and along with the wedding came tons of gifts meant to be used in the home. We bought, then sold a house, and now we live in our dream apartment. I love baking, so I have done a reasonable amount of that. I try to keep things simple around the house, now apartment, especially because there are only two of us. Here are some ridiculously delicious peanut butter/oatmeal/chocolate chunk cookies I made.

Eric
Shh…I am cheating for this one–I have two pictures. Eric is my husband, and I can honestly say he is my best friend. He is with me when I am crying and choking from laughing too hard, and he is also with me when I am crying for real. He makes breakfast and does so much for me–I could not have found a better guy for me.

This was right after our wedding. I was elated to finally be married to him.

This was actually on our honeymoon in Mexico. I love his smile here. Okay, okay. I hear you–enough of the smoochiness and on to another category.

Friends
I love my friends, and I really love the friendships I am developing right now. There are some friends I wish I could see more, but they live so far away. Somehow they remain such a vital part of my life. This picture just happens to be of one of my dearest, oldest friends from out of state. I know, it’s another wedding picture, but I just have so many of them that work for this!

Home
Next up is home. I am from Texas. I don’t feel particularly loyal to it as a place, but it is where almost all of my family is, so it will forever take up a huge chunk of my heart. And really? What’s not to love about the view? From my parents’ deck, I can see miles into the Texas Hill Country. Umm. I cheated on this one too. It is hard to appreciate the sunset without seeing the daytime view also.

Family
I am so attached to my family that it borders on ridiculous. I talk to my mom and grandmother every day, and keeping them near me was a big reason I decided to stay in Texas (but in a different city). After my sister leaves from sleeping over with me, I have a stomach ache from laughing so hard. I appreciate all of them for so many different reasons. The picture is of my sister’s legs entangled with mine. We’re goofy like that.

Politics
I call this one politics, but what I really mean is social justice. I may not always be very vocal about the issues I feel strongly about, but in a debate, I will always hold my own against any type of bigotry. I believe in exercising my rights, and defending the rights of those who find their civil or human rights threatened.

Marriage
Enough with the wedding right? Forgive me–I need to eke out all the pictures I can while I can still claim newlywed status. This is the last wedding picture. I promise. My marriage is very important to me, and one of the reasons we have such a strong relationship is because we actively communicate with each other to work things out before they blow up into something negative. We treat every misstep as a learning opportunity for how we can improve ourselves and our relationship. Yeah, we were liberal arts majors, and we just may meta-analyze kind of a lot.

Radish
Eric and I got Radish a few weeks after the wedding. I felt compelled to rescue a miniature dachshund to round out our little family of three. I placed an ad online looking to rescue, and we had her by the next morning. She was diagnosed with heartworms, and had clearly been abused. A few months later, she is free from the heartworms and has made such huge strides toward being mentally and emotionally secure. It is such hard work, but every kiss or excited pitter-patter makes it all so, so worth it.

Travel

Okay, so I cheated on this one too. I am hugely in love with traveling–we go every chance we get. I have found things to love about all of the countries and cities I have been too, but I think my favorites so far have been Munich and Siena. The first picture is of me nursing another love (cocoa) in Garmisch, a town in the Alps near Munich. It was freezing–the cold was like no cold I had ever experienced.The second is of a creepy statue in Siena. I can’t tell you much about it, because I really know nothing about Renaissance art.

This is arguably one of the longest picture posts I have ever done. I hope you enjoyed this small glimpse into my life! Now go visit Ginger’s post over at The Spotted Ottoman!

Yes, I’ve been drawn to the dark side, joined the masses, followed like a sheep:

@rambleginger

Why am I more overwhelmed by Twitter than this blog? Anyway, if you’re interested, follow along–and I’m still figuring out how many of the people whose blogs I obsess over follow are on twitter, so I’m sure I’ll be adding folks left and right.

I’ll probably put something in my sidebar at a later date, but I’m sick again today and can’t be bothered to…well…think, so it’ll have to wait.

Since this is sort of business type post, question for those of you who don’t have blogger blogs, or who do and know the answer to this: How do you comment on blogger blogs that don’t allow you to put your name/URL? I don’t want to use my google identity (that one is for my real world work life), and I don’t have an Open ID with any of the other blogging platforms. I’m stumped–and I’d really like to comment on a lot of blogger blogs, but keep running into this wall…