Writing and publishing online and still putting in time on my regularly scheduled life.

I was born in the Year of the Dragon, more than a few years ago. 2000 was another year of the Dragon, in December I married Todd, moved to the US and became an expatriate.

I work as a freelance writer online and in print. My favourite colour is deep, dark red. When I’m having a bad day going outdoors always makes me feel better. I’m reading the same book I started 6 months ago: Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd. I’m not especially musically inclined, I can turn on the radio and be happy leaving it in the background.

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Is it ok to take expired vitamins? I never remember to take them everyday. I always end up with half a bottle to go a month past the expiry date. 🙂 Found out more about vitamins but no answer to my questions. I still don’t know if the old pills are worth taking. Not that they seem to be helping much, I’ve got a runny nose and two cold sores today. 🙁
posted by Laura T. at 4/17/2001 03:49:16 PM

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin
posted by Laura T. at 4/16/2001 04:47:56 PM

Here I am alone again. My parents were here visiting but they left this morning. I gave Mom my old computer, Fritzie. She is glad to have a good computer to get online with and learns as she goes. 🙂 Sad to be here without them, alone with Todd and his family.
posted by Laura T. at 4/16/2001 01:32:00 PM

The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and cried
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away
I’ll always love you and make you happy
If you will only say the same
But if you leave me to love another
You’ll regret it all someday
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away
Davis, Mitchell

As kids we lived in a small town, Kincardine, near Lake Superior. My Dad worked in Toronto and I hardly remember him being there at all. Mom and my brother and baby sister would drive back and forth from our coutry house (run down wreck) to the town. The road went right alongside the lake. I can remember Mom singing You are My Sunshine as we drove along. 🙂
posted by Laura T. at 4/16/2001 01:29:36 PM

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high
If I had a day that I could give you
I’d give to you a day just like today
If I had a song that I could sing for you
I’d sing a song to make you feel this way

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high

If I had a tale that I could tell you
I’d tell a tale sure to make you smile
If I had a wish that I could wish for you
I’d make a wish for sunshine all the while

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high
Sunshine almost all the time makes me high
Sunshine almost always

Words by John Denver, Music by John Denver, Dick Kniss and Mike Taylor
Found these lyrics at Sing365.com
posted by Laura T. at 4/16/2001 01:22:04 PM

“The man of understanding finds everything laughable.” – Goethe
Makes you wonder if they’re laughing with you or at you, eh?
posted by Laura T. at 4/16/2001 01:17:03 PM

The Names and Naming Webring. There really is a webring for everything. 🙂
Laura’s Webring for Lauras Page. We even have our own webring.
posted by Laura T. at 4/15/2001 08:00:57 PM

What does your name mean? I have this on a mug I bought awhile ago. I haven’t looked at the mug in ages, I’ve just got it out when I needed more mugs today for my parents visit.
Laura “The Winner” – In 1327 Petrarch’s sonnets to Laura inspired some of the finest love poetry ever written and immortalized the name Laura forever. In the fifties a popular song was titled “Laura” and sang the praises of a mysterious and beautiful lady. “Lara’s Theme” from Dr. Zhivago is a popular song today.
posted by Laura T. at 4/15/2001 07:36:40 PM

The big news today is actually two things. First: ThemeStream is closing down. All the writers need to pull out their content before it goes bye bye. I think its a good thing for all the ezines out there. Now all those writers can give their articles to ezines who will appreciate it more and give better promotion to the writers. Its just a good thing all around.
The other news is about Yahoo. They are now aspiring to be the porn captial. Really makes they look like idiots (a nice word for it) after all the years they have deleted sites for having adult content. Even sites which were Wiccan/ Pagan or sites which wanted to give information about sexual fetishes to keep people from being hurt. The real question now is: will Yahoo change their policies for sites on Geocities. Or will Yahoo be afraid of the competition? *snicker*
posted by Laura T. at 4/12/2001 04:54:14 PM

The big news today is actually two things. First: ThemeStream is closing down. All the writers need to pull out their content before it goes bye bye. I think its a good thing for all the ezines out there. Now all those writers can give their articles to ezines who will appreciate it more and give better promotion to the writers. Its just a good thing all around.
The other news is about Yahoo. They are now aspiring to be the porn capital. Really makes they look like idiots (a nice word for it) after all the years they have deleted sites for having adult content. Even sites which were Wiccan/ Pagan or sites which wanted to give information about sexual fetishes to keep people from being hurt. The real question now is: will Yahoo change their policies for sites on Geocities. Or will Yahoo be afraid of the competition? *snicker*
posted by Laura T. at 4/12/2001 04:53:51 PM

I just posted to never never land, I guess, its gone at any rate. This time I’m going to paste it into Notepad before I hit that Post button.
I was at About.com today, the Screenwriters topic is open but it doesn’t interest me. I sent it into InkSplatters for someone else to step into, hopefully. I like to hear I helped someone on the list.

I did find an interesting topic available at Suite 101. Its not a big payout site, but the topic is interesting and doesn’t sound like a huge time commitment. Its Websites for Women with a monthly article and a database of links. The past manager left in December so its been available awhile. Likely I will be accepted. I think the topic has a lot of potential. I frequently find sites run by women who are doing interesting things online. Some with home businesses and some in creative pursuits, others starting up an offbeat club or a club based on a personal interest.
posted by Laura T. at 4/12/2001 04:40:04 PM

I was just looking around at WebSeed Publishing. Its kind of an odd site when you look at the scatterings of topics. Some topics like writing are so covered they overlap to the point where you really can’t tell one from another. I’ve applied for one topic but didn’t get in. They said they weren’t opening that area at the time. Yet, now I can see there are a few near misses. I’ve sent in another email and will see what happens. Today, I thought about going for an ASCII Art topic. But the focus may be too narrow. Besides, there just aren’t any books and gadgets to sell related to ascii art.
Blogger was down this morning. Lets see if its up and at em now. 🙂
posted by Laura T. at 4/12/2001 04:30:01 PM

Just lost the entry I made. I had the editor open too long and I guess my login to Blogger died. 🙁 Basically I said HerPlanet is tossing DialTone as the new server. They must be pretty incompetent after two weeks of paid overtime and still not getting the HerPlanet sites loaded and working. Now we are transfering to a new server which is through one of the HerPlanet network managers. I’m even going to try loading up my own site. I’m not an ftp novice but I’m hardly an expert. I learn from my mistakes but that means you have to make plenty of mistakes to learn from.
posted by Laura T. at 4/11/2001 02:18:36 PM

This is kind of neat. Make your own license plate.

posted by Laura T. at 4/10/2001 11:47:25 AM

The ultimate Raggedy Ann site. I’ve bought the pattern and some fabric but I’ve yet to actually start making the dolls. I have mine up here by the desk. My Mom made her with grey hair. Even she wonders why she did that now. It was what she had around then, but grey?!! It does make her pretty unique among Raggedy Ann’s. All the popular dolls have red hair of some shade.
I think Raggedy Ann is the US attempt at our Canadian Anne of Green Gables. Of course there is Pippi Longstocking too. I’m not sure if she isn’t English though. Odd how all three of my favourite fictional characters are all red heads. I’m not, my hair is a lovely shade of brown, chestnut. My little sister is a redhead but she just isn’t someone you could picture as the Anne/ Ann type. Though we did call her Orphan Annie when she was a kid. Her hair was out of control back then, just too darn curly. Cute though. 🙂
posted by Laura T. at 4/10/2001 10:57:55 AM

Usually I leave ICQ undisturbed in my hard drive. Its great when I’m away and want to talk to Todd, a definate long distance savings. But its kind of useless now that I’m back here and on my own computer again. If my family get using it that would be great. But, so far, its just gathering dust. The women from the HerPlanet site use it to chat but when I look few of them are set on for chatting. If someone is there I’m not really in a chatty mood at the time. The only people making real use of my ICQ are the trolls signing themselves up as “friends”. I have it set to let anyone sign up. Its much easier than having to bother rejecting them all. I don’t care if they need another notch on their belt to feel better. I’ve never talked to any of them so it works both ways. Maybe there is some way to delete them from the ICQ site, I might do that, just to be contrary. 😉
posted by Laura T. at 4/10/2001 10:40:47 AM

I found a nice site called Smiley Divas, part of a Calgon promotion. I especially like smiley graphics so I grabbed a bunch from the site for my desktop. There is a screensaver you can download too. Nice job Calgon. 🙂
posted by Laura T. at 4/10/2001 10:11:19 AM

For some reason I’m still signed up with Etour. Its one of those get paid for surfing things but you actually get gift certificates instead of cash from them. I think it should have worked out better than it has. The problem is likely the competition from the cash paying sites which would look more attractive. But, I thought Etour’s way of doing things had a better chance of actually paying its users. It has too. I’ve had a couple of gift certificates from Barnes and Noble. Lately they have been getting less sponsers. Its a first come first serve basis now when you are ready to redeem your points.
posted by Laura T. at 4/10/2001 09:37:13 AM

I’ve got the Ask the Witch site in a state of chaos. I found Geocities would not work with my FrontPage 2000. It works well with the site I’ve had up for a few months but not the new one. I don’t know why. Todd was reading about it and says its to do with changes they are making at the Geocities site. Anyway, I went to poke around at old Tripod and found it very interesting. They now have a weblog and ezine template which include cgi and archives. So now Ask the Witch is between Geocities and Tripod. I’m not sure where it will end up or how. I am thinking of going with the ezine template and maybe keeping Geocities as just the front page so I can contine to use the email account I set up there. Tripod/ Lycos is being a bit tricky about starting another email account. I may yet figure it out though.
posted by Laura T. at 4/9/2001 05:12:28 PM

There is a feeling of terror in the newsgroups, people are in a panic and try to escape this new terror before it can load on a website. What is this dreaded thing? A Comet cursor. Doesn’t sound so terrifying you think. Me too. But you should see them in the newsgroup where I mentioned using them. LOL I think people are getting into too much paranoia over the tiniest chance or thought of spam. They say Comet Cursors will track your web surfing and report it back to ??? I don’t think they know either. I would guess the most logical would be commercial sites/ stores. I wrote to Comet Cursors to find out about this and heard back within a week. I was told the whole thing is just a rumour, based on very little fact. I believe them. Am I just very trusting? No, I just don’t see why anyone would think my surfing habits are all that interesting. Read my blog, do I seem like someone leading a life of excitement and ultimate naughtiness? So, I’ve added a cursor to this blog, I have had one on my website for a couple of years and I will be putting one on HerCorner when it goes up too. Does that scare you? Too bad. Oh no, I’m not laughing at you, honest.
posted by Laura T. at 4/9/2001 05:05:10 PM

The weekend is over. Here I am. Email isn’t working today, its most likely the server cause it was last week when the same thing happened. This time they don’t have the excuse of a stormy day. Its like summer here today. I have windows open and the fan blowing the cobwebs around. Soon Todd will be here, honking the horn for me to bring the weekend videos down to him. I think we will take a ride around the park and pick up another loaf of bread.
Right now I’m over at Stor Entertainment making a StorTrooper of myself. I couldn’t find just the right top but its pretty good.

I talked to my Mom this morning soon after Todd left. They are leaving tomorrow morning from Florida. She is figuring on a two day drive to get here. So I’ve got that long to kill the dust bunnies and less cute dust, dirt and so on which I’ve been neglecting.
posted by Laura T. at 4/9/2001 04:52:45 PM