This is a wonderful 20 minute talk about the ramifications of American society's current reliance on industrially produced meats and junk foods.  I hope that some of you will take the time to watch it instead of playing on facebook for 20 minutes or watching the Jersey Shore.  Continual education is KING! :)   My small change for the month of February was relevant to this talk. From now on, I will spend one week of each month as a full vegetarian. My hope is that this practice will open my eyes up to delicious vegetarian meals that are convenient for my lifestyle and lead to me eating less meat as a whole.  Today starts my week of vegetarianism for the month of March.

This week some of the blogs that I follow have had some really fun posts so I wanted to link to them and make ya'll smile.

(oh, and some random pictures too)

Ohdeardrea has this beautiful song on her blog that was so pleasant to listen to while I was on night audit last night.

"Lily is SO CUTE!"

Earth Mama has this really inspirational picture post about learning everything you can from the way children ARE... which I thinks speaks highly to the Riotous Living mantra that Wayne and I try to live by every day.  We're always telling people to act like children, and we do so every chance we get.

"Thunder LOVES these blogs!"

and Lost Button Studio is doing a Japan fundraiser on her etsy shop.  Follow this link for directions on how to buy a pair of her beautiful earrings and donate 100% of the proceeds to relief funds.

"I approve of this message"

"Disco Stormtrooper, why not?"

I've been working on the tech that drives Riotous Living a little bit. Hopefully I will be rolling this stuff out by the end of April (that is my personal goal). I know some of the people who follow this blog are geeks like myself and might be interested in the present and future direction of the blogs software and 3rd party integrations.

Current

Right now this blog is run on a simple Wordpress installation which is hosted by one of the best shared providers I've ever had the privilege to throw my website crap on to, WebFaction. This has served us fairly well, but the Python programmer and tinkerer in me just can't let things be, so I am in the progress of migrating this blog to my favorite blogging platform Blogofile.

I've recently acquired the short domain rtslv.in for our Twitter and Facebook links for blog posts on the site. That domain is powered by bit.ly Pro and I'm very happy with it and hope that bit.ly stays around a long time.

We use Google Analytics + the tracking statistics available with bit.ly Pro to track out goals and traffic to the site. Both of these work very well, give great detail and insight in to which content our users like the best and which posts do best over time and which ones do really good at first and tail off.

Future

The future of Riotous Living is bright. I am making HTML5 and CSS3 templates for the new site design. I am using Blogofile with some custom filters and extensions to the controllers for generating the static content that will be served via nginx. I've started a Pyramid project called Riotous Tools that will provide life tools to our visitors (like 101 in 1001 lists and Life Calendars).

With the move to Blogofile we will also be using a media.riotousliving.com subdomain which will be a CNAME to a Amazon CloudFront for all our embedded images and video. This will greatly increase the load times of the site for all the pages and posts.

You can preview the Blogofile beta of the site and the developmental version of the Tools application and send your feedback along to me and I will review it and probably ignore most of it until I decide I am out of development and the versions are "stable", then I will re-read all the feedback and see if things still apply.

Summary

Moving from Wordpress to Blogofile does have it's own challenges. There is no WYSIWYG editor. There is no picture album uploader. There is no web interface to download and install plugins. All this means I will be teaching Jessa some basic HTML/RST and that we will have to maintain our own media folder for uploads and images. Overall these things are minor for the added control I get of the HTML and CSS the site produces.

So many of my fellow bloggers have been able to do what, up until now, I could not.... define the upcoming year in one overarching theme.... in ONE WORD.

It's a lot of pressure.  To resolve that you'll live your life for the next year with this one theme - this one WORD - in mind.  And that this will somehow lead to a happier and healthier you, to personal development on a grand scale and to minor self actualization.

I avoided making any New Years Resolutions this year because it seemed like life was paused.  As a Type A life planner, it was difficult for me to try to conceptualize a year that I didn't dare dream about.  It seems appropriate that the inspiration for my one word resolution come right now, when it's time for the next chapter in my life to begin in earnest.

While at Clemson for their Selection Weekend and assistantship interviews I absorbed some important tidbits of advice that I hope to use throughout the next few years.  One of them was this...

"There are going to be so many opportunities to get involved and to develop yourself in the next few years.  I want to encourage you to BE INTENTIONAL in your actions.  Take advantage of those opportunities that are going to challenge you to step outside of your comfort zone and don't overwhelm yourself with the activities that won't."

So here is my ONE WORD RESOLUTION FOR 2011!

cre·ate

[kree-eyt]  Show IPAverb, -at·ed, -at·ing, adjective

Very recently I was scheduled to head on into Tampa for my program interview at USF for their CSA program.  Instead of making the two hour drive for a twenty minute interview and then driving back, Wayne and I decided to turn it into a nice overnight trip.  Luckily, the hotel that I work night audit at happens to have a sister property on the beach.  Even more luckily, that property is within walking distance of the Karaoke bar that Wayne and I went to on our first date.

... can I get a collective "awwwwwww"?

We have no romantical pictures of the trip because we tend to have more fun than romance.  So you'll have to make do with Wayne's awesome Karaoke face.

One of my fantastic lady friends and one of her gentleman friends met us at the bar.  Which was great because this guy proved to be highly entertaining.... if by "entertaining" you take me to mean "over indulged to the point of vomiting in the hotel room all night instead of hanging out with us in the hot tub" and "couldn't drive Steph home and instead slept in his car while she waited for another ride."

Nonetheless, I'm super glad that they came because it's not often I get to visit with my talkative, curly haired, politically minded lady friend.  And I can't exactly claim complete propriety for the entire night.  Directly after taking this picture and leaving Grand Central I decided to bolt directly across the street as fast as I could, ignoring the median and therefor tripping over it in grand fashion.  Two weeks later I still have scabs on my shoulder and knee and ankle.  The important thing is that my cute dress was not ruined.

The next day, Wayne and I took my bruised and battered self out for a turkey burger and a nap in the sand.  Oh, and some sweet sunglasses.

YAY Road trips!!