Ending and beginning

I'm finishing up nablopomo with this post. It was a fun challenge, but now I'm on to the next challenge.

I signed up for the 29 day challenge. The idea is to give away 29 things in 29 days. You can start any time, but I decided to start on Thanksgiving which mean I will end the day after Christmas. It seemed like an appropriate time of the year to do it.

Already I've found that it's a bit difficult to decide what and who to give something to each day. I might have to do some brainstorming. I am sure I will learn a lot by the end of the 29 days.

Seeing the finish line

Blogging every day has been challenging. Actually, that's not accurate. I do pretty much blog every day normally in one place or another. It's been the blogging consistently on one blog that has been challenging. It's a nice outlet for randomness though, so I will try to continue writing here in the future. Hmm, maybe I should have saved this post for tomorrow...

You can swap that too?

We heard today that some people are opting to swap their homes instead of selling them. What an interesting idea. I think it would be difficult to make it work out-of-state, but it gives us something to think about. I hope in a few more years our lives won't be so up-in-the-air and maybe by then the housing market will recover. But if it doesn't--and we're ready to move--at least the possibility of swapping homes gives us another escape plan.

Thanksgiving 2008

Bruce and I had Thanksgiving together this year just the two of us. It was nice to not have the stress of time schedules, and we ended up hanging out and cooking all day.

I've done cooking on Thanksgiving, but never everything from scratch. We didn't even make very many dishes, but it was quite a bit of work. Mentally more so maybe. We just don't do that much cooking these days. So, psychologically I think it's more tiring. My grandmother used to bake bread, can vegetables, do dishes, and cook stock as a daily routine. Today is just a different time.

I am most happy with the pumpkin cupcakes we made. It was nice to have something traditional and non-traditional rolled into one. And other than the icing (we didn't have any vegan cream cheese) the cupcakes were vegan. I was actually amazed at how great they tasted.

Pre-chewed pencils

As my husband pointed out, the chair pad that doubles as a backpack is from a country outside the US and sold to students outside the US. Perhaps students in the UK are more body conscious than students in this country.

Outside of that, the company has a second product that is also interesting. Pre-chewed pencils are a unique novelty. If you don't chew your pencils I can't imagine you would want something like that. And if you do, you might feel disappointed that it's already partially pre-chewed. There must be a third category of pencil users to warrant such a product.

Not practical, but pretty funny.

Backpack or backpain

I came across an interesting product today. It's a backpack and seat cushion in one.

I have to wonder who this is really being marketed toward. If you are in high school you don't care if your plastic chair is hard. You're young. It doesn't bother you. That's why you also carry around 400 pounds of books and don't have any back pain.

So is this really just another baby boomer product that is being discreetly disguised from the baby boomers themselves? It must be hard to market to people who are aging but want to maintain their self-delusional mentality of "we never got old."

Hmm. I'm gonna keep a look out at coffee shops.

Finally, the interview

Tonight I was interviewed by a panel for possible appointment to the town's ethics commission. I've been on committees and board before but this is the first time I have considered doing anything political on any level. For this four-year position you get one evening to campaign for yourself and you never meet the other people who are being considered. So I hope I did ok. I'll just have to wait and see what happens.