Sock Rockers, Mount Up!

The theme of the week has been the "rocking of one's socks" by a slick witted or enthusiastic friend. You could simply say "You go, girl!" but that would just be tired and boring. I prefer my girl, Lori's verbiage and, frankly, am trying to give it more mileage because she was embarrassed to have said it in the first place. What kind of friend would I be if I didn't accentuate that? Boring, that's what.

So, although the list of my own personal sock rockers--either qualified by direct or indirect sock rockage-- is long and detailed, for the sake of brevity (what? I can be brief!) I will list but a few here. I won't fail to list them in random order.

• David Horton - a high school mate of mine. Apparently an overachieving genius. Published author among many other things. About to graduate from college... again... and then go to another one? Acquainted with the likes of Doug E. Fresh and Maya Angelou. No one likes a show off, Dave.

• Merrie Haskell - another school mate. We were kicking it as far back as junior high. Wordsmith extraordinaire and brilliant (if self deprecating) science fiction writer, among other things.
  

• Kelly K (not sure if she wants her whole name on blast): Creative director and marketing manager for www.TheELearningCenter.com. She's only about a hundred light years ahead of me as far as education and credentials, but has suggested the possibility of me applying for an internship down the road when I get closer to my degree.
  

• Lori "Rock My Socks" V - If you've read my blog at all, you know who I'm talking about. She's a mover and shaker from way back. See "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves" for further insight. You wish you could bring yourself to hate her for her gifts... but you just can't.

Speaking of socks, I'm about a half hour behind schedule getting myself and baby girl dressed and ready to head out with Jill to run errands. She told me not to rush, but I will feel so inferior if she has two small children ready to go before I square away one! Luckily for me I am riding the wave of self-appreciation from having uploaded about a dozen new things to the Etsy shop and having sold one already.

McRebound.

So, did you watch Grey's Anatomy last night? So many good quips-- so little time. If you can't find the entertainment value in this show, then I submit that your credibility is seriously in question. Set aside the moral implications of some of its content and the rumors and scandals running rampant among the cast members-- this show is funny. I loved the part last night when Addison (Kate Walsh) asked Miranda (Chandra Wilson) about Derek (Patrick Dempsey)'s new lady friend in a not-so-complimentary way... when she was standing right there. That was almost as good as when Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) more or less referred to herself and her friends as fickle sluts. Can't beat that dialog with a stick!

Speaking of sticks, I wanted to beat myself with one yesterday afternoon. I finally.... as perhaps the last human on the planet to do so.... installed the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Now, I don't know if it's just my finicky PC or if I'm just slow on the uptake: but this bad boy is working WAY FASTER for me than Internet Explorer ever has. I haven't had a chance to play with all of its little gizmos yet, but I realized right off the bat that it needed to be my default browser. I recall an old friend of mine (she's not old-- I've just known her awhile!), Alison, talking about Firefox ages ago. And given how much swifter she is than I am about such things, one wonders why I didn't investigate sooner. And as it happens, I only ended up with this utility as a result of downloading a bundle of stuff from Google. I am, as ever, an accidental success!

And, speaking of success, I am hoping upon hope that today will be the day that I either figure out how to make my camera take decent close-ups or that I will get my hands on a better camera (hint, hint to my dear, beloved, gorgeous hunk of a spouse!) so that I can take pictures and list the dozen or so new things I've made for Etsy. One, in particular, was requested as a trade from another seller. That's fun. See the picture below.... Psych. ;) Maybe later if fortune smiles on me today.

A big, fat, liquored up TGIF!

Signed,

McDufus

Chinglish.

What's that, you say? Well, according to the lively chat crowd at Etsy this morning, that might be a way to refer to the speaking accent of a Chinese American individual. This was not, I assure you, meant to be derogatory. At least no more so than any other accent we discuss (southern American, Canadian and so on).

Another gem I stumbled upon this morning was spidercamp's shop. OMG. This stuff is too funny if you love persnickety stuff as much as I do. You could actually give someone "Herpes." Or tell them to kiss your "Arse." Now, that's funny. Frankly, I wish I had thought of it first!

At any rate, I am getting a lot of mileage out of those photos I took of my husband's campaign cover. The latest is my picture for the page I just made on Facebook for usmcwives.com. I'm still tweaking it, of course. What else is new?! And I can't seem to get my other bells and whistles on the page like I want them so I am hoping at some point for there to be content where the blankness is... but we'll see. Also, I don't like that it's listed as a "store" but I can't seem to find any other way to do it....

Speaking of bells and whistles, I'm hooked up on MySpace with a handful of very talented ladies who design graphics. I am really impressed with their work! We're mostly talking military graphics but they do other stuff, too. Check out Combat Medic Designs and A & C's Military Princess Designs for some really cute stuff.

Sisters are doin' it for themselves.

It's time for me to show some love for a couple of my girls who don't even know I'm blogging and don't know I'm talking about them. Why don't they know, you ask? Well because I am very tentative about the things (stores) I am working on and don't plan to come fully out of the closet until I get myself a little more squared away. Once I do, there will be no shutting me up. At any rate, it would be an exercise in confusion to have a discussion with either of these people and mention my screen name because while they might eventually guess who you were talking about, the preceeding conversation would be very Abbott and Costello-like.

As both of these ladies have made their names available online, I will go ahead and use them here as well. And both of these ladies are my friends in real life.

First, a lady not unlike ourselves who didn't like the way something was so she just.... fixed it. The world isn't perfect and neither is her solution, but I have to say I think it's great. Lori is a Marine's wife (her husband actually got out a couple of years ago, but once a Marine....) and also a Marine's sister who went online in search of some helpful information when her brother went off to boot camp at Parris Island some years back. Needless to say, at that time there was nothing of much use to be found on the web. So she started a little forum ("board") on the EZBoard site which has since morphed into Yuku.com. It's called The Parris Island Family & Friends Support Center. Talk about "If you build it, they will come." It's still somewhat underground but has generated such activity over the past few years that it does now show on the first list of Google results if you query "Parris Island." Mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, fathers and whatsits of recruits have flocked in to mingle with their own kind: the confused, the apprehensive, the enthusiastic, the sleep deprived. Because I so love Lori and the board, I will try to keep my analysis of it here as objective as possible and leave out the extra bit of Ooh Rah. What you will get when visiting this board is some very good (read: current) information for lay people about the daily procedures at Parris Island, comprehensive information and suggestions related to graduation, some input here and there from drill instructors' spouses and other moderators deemed experienced enough to pitch in, a chat room that goes full blast every evening, last I checked, and the occasional bit of drama from stray, misinformed souls who may be under the impression that Parris Island is akin to a concentration camp or who may not have recruits at all but may just be war protestors (although the latter is very rare). There is some occcasional "rank wearing" that happens with some of the Marine wives who work on the board, although I think it is unintentional for the most part and should just be humored because, frankly, being the wife of a DI is a tall order and because sometimes they catch a lot of flack just for trying to help out. If I seem overly familiar with the details here it's because I worked on this board for the better part of two years. I actually made some long term contributions to it that I'm quite proud of. No, I will not tell you what my username is. ;)

As icing on the cake, there are links on the board to a sister board known as the USMC board. This is for folks whose Marines have already graduated from boot camp. It's not quite as active as the Parris Island board, but that is to be expected as the uninitiated tend to be needier than those who have gotten their feet wet. And, because the PI board grew so expensive to operate, Lori started a store on Cafepress, the proceeds of which go to funding the extensive costs for the board's monthly usage (hits, bandwidth, etc). There are some good, company and graduation date specific items on there. Note that I will be very careful when I place designs in my own store not to infringe on anything that Lori is doing.

If you or anyone you know has a recruit headed off to Parris Island, I suggest you have them check out the board. There have been many copycats and some outright stealing of Lori's materials, but this is an original.

Second on my list of shout outs is my friend, Jill. Jill is not a Marine wife but if there were such a thing as a civilian equivalent, she would be it. That must be why we get along so famously. Jill is a mother of 4 who teaches autistic kids, has a great sense of humor (often socially inappropriate-- which I love!), and loves to knit and make felted items in her spare time. I turned her on to Etsy recently and I am so excited for her because she's going to blow right up. I personally own some of her hand knitted items and love them. As a matter of fact, she made a beautiful green blanket for my daughter and I am completely unable to pry it away from her. Jill is definitely shout-worthy and although she is just getting started and doesn't have a large inventory yet, so is her shop. So check it out.

Both of these ladies are good, everyday people that I am proud to call my friends.

TGIF.