A little blog housekeeping here. Don’t run away. Please.

When I was little, I was in Bluebirds and/or Brownies and I learned the song that’s first verse is “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold.” I have lots of good “old” (the term is not in reference to age) friends and I am making some new ones.

I have been neglectful in mentioning that I was awarded this I Love Your Blog award. Twice. First, Fantastagirl, from The Adventures of Fantastagirl, gave it to me. Um, a long time ago. Then about a week or so ago, Wander, from Wander’s World, gave it to me again. I really have no excuse for not putting it up. Well, except that I was either without computer, working, doing lots of end of the summer stuff, doing family stuff or I was having lots of inspiration for posting fodder. I’m sorry. I hope you guys will forgive me for not getting to this sooner. Thank you for bestowing this upon me. You are good, long time (that’s better than old, isn’t it?) friends.

I’m sure you all noticed that I did some changing around here. Not only did I change the template, but, in an extreme period of geekiness, I signed up for a bunch of social networking stuff. This is the making new friends part. You can follow me or friend me at these places, among others: digg, LinkedIn, Mixx, see my Netflix queue, Plurk, Reddit, Stumbleupon (give me some Stumble love), Vimeo and Popego.

My Popego link over there in the sidebar is really cool. It’s just below my FriendFeed button. Click on it. I’ll wait. *whistling* You back? Isn’t that cool? You can also click through to the actual site and it will show you all my moves around the net and stuff I’ve posted and whatever. FriendFeed also does thata. You can click on my FF link over there, too. I think Popego is more organized and easier to read than FF, so if you were only going to sign up for one, I’d recommend Popego.

Of course you can still find me at YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and gtalk (shellimil is my gtalk username). Good grief, you would think that I don’t have a real life or something. Wait, do I? The really cool thing about FriendFeed and Popego is that it pulls it all together for you through some weird Internet magic thing. I don’t know if that scares me or thrills me. hmmmm…Can you say extreme dork? Yep that’s me.

All that stuff that I just talked about is in the sidebar. Take a look around. Also, there is a box that says, “Shelli’s Shared Items”. That’s the stuff that I read in my Google Reader that I think is worth sharing with the rest of the world. Check it out and then check back again from time to time. You might be there sometimes or you may find a new friend or two.

(Quick note: If you didn’t see my post that I did from my Blackberry and you have a smartphone such as Blackberry or iPhone, you should check it out. It’s about a cool plugin you can get for your WordPress blog that allows you to publish from your phone. It’s pretty awesome.)

(Quick note 2: It was my Mom’s birthday yesterday. Happy birthday, Mom. I didn’t post yesterday or I would have mentioned it then. She’s old now. Almost old enough to retire. She has to win the lottery first so she can help support me, too.)

This is not one of those deep, thought-provoking posts that I was talking about yesterday. Just thought I would warn you.

The other day, I was watching Martha Stewart. Shut up. She was making these doily bowls and then she put some eggs in them for decoration. It actually was very pretty and looked pretty easy to do. The really cool part was before she put the eggs in the doily bowl, she blew the egg yolk out of the eggs with this really egg yolk blowing out tool thing.

Isn’t that awesome? You poke the little needle thing in and wiggle it around a little and then you use the accordion part to blow out the egg. Of course, I would never do anything like that. That is just too much work.

However, it got me thinking about my head. I was thinking about all the headaches and depression that resides there. I thought, how cool would it be to have one of those for my head? Of course it would have to be a little bigger to blow out the old noggin. When I would get a headache, stick the pin in and wiggle it around and then squeeze, squeeze squeeze until the headache was gone. Same with the depression. When that bitch, Chatterbox, starts her annoying litany, same thing. Just blow her out of my brain.

God, if only it were that easy. Well, and not as messy.

Fab tagged me with this thing and he called it Crazy 8s. I’m not really copying him, but I couldn’t think of anything else to call it and I thought it was appropriate since I am crazy.

8 Things I’m Passionate About

• My husband, Jason.
• My children, Ashley, Emily and Sam.
• My granddaughter, Isabelle.
• Writing.
• Blogging.
• Children in general. (Not like that, you perverts.) I have spent all my adult life in jobs where I was in some way caring for children. I am passionate about their well being, in general.
• Music.
• Honesty.

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die

• See New York.
• Go back to Jamaica.
• See my children grown and happy and healthy.
• See more grandchildren born. IN THE RIGHT ORDER. (That means after marriage or at least after college.)
• Publish a novel. Or an autobiography. Or a biography. Or at least have something published besides a blog post or an obituary.
• Be thin. And not because of cancer or some other awful disease.
• Travel more.
• Learn to love myself.

8 Things I Say Often

• Almost done, Peanut (Swap out Peanut with Princess, Pumpkin, Buddy, Little One).
• How are you doing? Or: How’s it going?
• Have a good day; I love you.
• I’m going to take a nappy.
• Delilah, no!
• What’s for supper?
• Kennel!
• I am going to cut my head off. Interchange with any of the following: I hate my head. My head is killing me. I have a fucking headache. Stupid fucking headaches.

8 Books I’ve Read Recently

• Invisible Prey by John Sanford.
• One More Day by Mitch Albom.
• The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold.
• Heaven’s Prisoners by James Lee Burke.
• Neon Rain by James Lee Burke.
• A Book A Friend Gave Me.
• I will be reading Murder For Hire – The Peruvian Pigeon by Dana Fredsti as soon as I am done with A Book A Friend Gave Me.
• Head First HTML With CSS and XHTML by Elizabeth and Eric Freeman.

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

• Anna Nalick
• Evanesence
• Big and Rich
• Garth Brooks
• Hinder
• Nickelback
• Martina McBride
• Sugarland

I know. I cheated a little bit here. I’m sorry. I just cannot narrow it down to 8 songs. I had a hard time narrowing it down to 8 artists/groups. Deal with it.

8 Things That Attract Me to My Best Friends

• Honesty
• Humor
• Acceptance
• Loyalty
• Compassion
• Passion (Let me explain: I hate people who are flat and don’t really have opinions about anything. BOOOOring. I want friends who have opinions about things. I want them to share them with me. I want to argue them with me.
• Intelligence

8 People I Think Should Do Crazy 8’s

• Barrack Obama
• Hillary Clinton
• John McCain
• Osama Bin Ladin
• Fidel Castro
• Dubya
• Al Gore
• Tim Pawlenty

If you talk to any of them, will you let them know I tagged them?

I will just say this quick about my mental health issues…I cannot get in to be seen by my therapist until 3/19. Not kidding. I am sure there are ways I could be seen earlier, but I am not willing to lie. I see my regular doctor this afternoon.

TrishK did this on her blog. I was going to do it a little differently and ask you to tell me what you think my answer would be first and then tomorrow I would come back and tell you what my answers actually were. I decided not to because I know that people don’t have time for that and I got so many lovely, supportive comments yesterday, I didn’t want to go from 24 comments to 2 comments in the space of a day. You can read the answer and then tell me if it was what you thought I would say. Or don’t. Whatever you want to do. It’s just a respite from the seriousness of yesterday.

1. If you had a chance to go back in time and live in another era, what era would be and why?

I don’t think I would want to. No other time would have the technology, medical knowledge or the great air conditioning that we have nowadays. You know how I hate to be hot and they used to not only not have AC, but they made women wear them heavy long dresses (don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind wearing them when it wasn’t hot outside). No wonder they were always fainting. If I had to go back then I would want to be a princess so people would have to fan me and keep me cool.

2. What’s one thing a person can do to make you instantly dislike them?

Act phony. Just being insincere and dishonest. I can usually see right through it and I hate it.

3. If you could pick one meal/food of your choice to eat as much as you want and never get fat or suffer any health consequences from it, what meal/food would you pick?

Seafood. Especially scallops.

4. What TV show do you watch that you’re embarrassed to admit to?

Celebrity Apprentice. I swore I would never watch another season because Donald Trump drives me crazy, but there is something about all those egos trying to work together that is magnetic and I can’t turn it off. Besides, I love me some Trace Adkins.

5. What celebrity are you embarrassed to be attracted to?

I am not really embarrassed, but most people are surprised when I tell them I am totally attracted to and love Kid Rock.

*Update at just before post time*: Just saw the Garth Man on Jay Leno. He sang More Than a Memory. OMG! Garth, you still do it for me.

So, there you go. Was it pretty much what you thought or were there some surprises?

I didn’t ask her or tell her any of the questions before I hit the record button. This one is much shorter than the last one. It’s about 2 1/2 minutes. She cracks me up. I hope you enjoy it, too. Pup asked for a picture to go with it so she could look at her at the same time as she is listening to her talk. Suzi said that I should set the audio of Isabelle to pictures. I may do that if I can ever figure that out.

Was that fun?