NaBloPoMo Badges - April 2008

Although I am not on the blogroll for April (the theme is “Letters”), I have made some badges for the month anyway!

Download away!

Note:
Feel free to use them on your blog but please download and save them to your server first (do not hotlink from this website). If you’ve used these badges, do link back to NaBloPoMo website, I’m sure Eden will appreciate it. See instructions and other badges at the NaBloPoMo site.

You don’t have to link back to me (although I’d greatly appreciate it ♥) but I’d love to see these being used on your blog, so drop me a comment if you do, and I’ll pay your site a visit. :)

Tutorials
Adding Badges using Blogger
Adding Badges using WordPress

NaBloPoMo- The Last List for March

Today is the 31st and final day of NaBloPoMo March 2008. Though I have been blogging here everyday this month, I kinda lost focus in the third week due to my work commitments.

What this experience taught me:

1. It is good to have a plan, but don’t be blue if you can’t follow it through. My daily themed posts worked. For awhile.
2. If you’re in the middle of a project that needs to be completed by mid-April, signing up for NaBloPoMo in March is not the wisest thing to do.
3. Despite the lure of “Letters“, I will not give in to temptation. (see point 2)
4. There are so many of fun, witty blogs just waiting to be discovered.

For those committing to April’s theme — all the best! I will try to find time to check your all blogs out!

Junk Food Day

After looking at the cute stuff from Re-Ment, I found myself craving for a lot of things. The sad thing is, I got myself a lot of junk food and ate them in one sitting:

1 garlic butter bread
1 bowl instant noodles
1 coffee-filled chocolate bar
3 slices of white bread with chocolate spread
1 bag of salted nuts
6 Mentos
1 can of Pringles chips (oh oh!)

Not too proud of myself. I’m having a bit of a tummy ache. I wonder why…

Kid’s Answers to Life

My favourite answers from “Kids’ Answers to Life’s Big Questions” by Steve & Ruth Bennett.

Q. What makes rainbows?
A. Pieces of sunset.

Q. What should you do when you feel like hitting someone?
A. Ask them if they want to be hit.

Q. What kinds of things make people happy?
A. John Lennon.

Q. What are some things to be sad about?
A. Running out of coffee. < True

Q. Why do countries fight wars?
A. Because they don’t like cats and the other country has cats.

Q. What does the vice-president do?
A. He golfs.

Losing It for a Minute

At 630pm yesterday I realised I had not spoken to my black cat, Spooky Angel, the whole day. She’s a very talkative cat who can answer most of life’s important questions, sometimes, with great wisdom, wit and intelligence, so it was unusual that a day would pass without us engaging in serious conversation.

She was sleeping beside me when I was reading a publication at 8 in the morning. Being the affectionate lap cat that she is, she’d wanted to sit well, on my lap, but I wasn’t in the mood to entertain the fuzz ball as I had to concentrate on an article, so I nudged her away.

A few minutes would pass and I’d fallen asleep sitting. When I woke up, I found the little Angel asleep, beside my right thigh. Aaaaw… I felt a little guilty for not letting her take a nap on my lap, especially when I was more asleep than doing anything else, but then she woke up and looked at me with the look — yeah-you-know-you-want-me look– anticipating that I’d take her and place her on her rightful human cushion. I thwarted her happiness by pushing her off the couch! Ha ha ha! So evil of me!

Anyway, it was 630pm and I’d not seen her since then so I called her name. There was no answer. I looked around the house. Under the couch, in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, under the beds, on top of cupboards, everywhere. She was nowhere to be found. And then it hit me that she might have slipped out when I went out at about 10am.

I went to search for her outside, bracing for the worst - she might have been ran over by a car, eaten by a pack of wild dogs or was taken by someone - someone better, someone who wouldn’t mind her sitting on his/her lap all day. Strangely, only the last thought made me wanna cry.

I got very worried because she’s a black kitty and it would be very difficult to find her in the dark . And then all that I felt was guilt. Guilt. Guilt. GUILT. Am I being punished for being mean to her? Will she forever remember me as the evil witch that pushed her off the couch?! Do I have to live with this guilt forever?!!!

.

.

.

It took me all of two minutes to find her. She was asleep at my neighbour’s steps. When I called her name, she just opened one eye, and looked slightly annoyed, like “Wha? Don’t be disturbing my sleep, woman”.

She was very calm when I carried her back home. I smothered her in kisses and showered her with words of love but when I tried to put her on my lap, she sneered at me and went off to eat instead. Oh well… Thank God I found her. I’ll never deprive a cat of my lap again.

Related links
I can has cheezburger
Cute Overload

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Power Control
Happiness Is…
Tablet Do’s and Don’ts
Pencil Thief and A Little Faith

Got Milk?

Ok, so the high-calcium soya(soy) milk diet I’ve been following religiously for a month didn’t work. I’ve been sitting in my chair for the past, oh, 10 hours, craughing hysterically while trying to maintain enough sanity to get some work done. Enough whining for now, I need to review what went wrong and plan what to do next.

“New research suggests that a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D may help prevent premenstrual syndrome, or PMS.”
CBS News

Could it be that I’m not getting enough vitamin D to absorb all the calcium I’m consuming(the soya milk is not fortified with vitamin D)? But a few minutes of sun a day should’ve been enough, no? In any case, I am thoroughly OVER with soya milk to go through this experiment another month with a vitamin D-fortified version so I’m thinking of trying something else, I dunno, fortified juice, cod liver oil or chocolate milk? Chocolate milk sounds good.

Related links
Calcium & Vitamin D for PMS - CBS
Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Vitamin D
Got Milk?
Got PMS?
Get the Glass! Game

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There Must Be A Better Alternative To This
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Power Control

There was a power failure just now. When I got the power back up, there was a *bzz…bzz* sound coming from the mess of cables under my desk. Upon inspection I found out that the failure was due to…. my cat.

One of my cats had peed onto my multi-plug extension outlet rendering it wet and useless. I’m thinking of banning them from entering the room. I know I’ve thought of this a hundred times before but AAARGH! this time it’s too much!

I’m typing all this on a UMPC with an uncomfortably small keyboard. I can’t do any work now. My computer refuses to start up after the power went off just now. So very, very annoying!

The “No Cats in the Room” rule will be on with immediate effect. At least until one of them gives me the Puss in Boots dilated-pupils, I’m-so-cute-and-innocent look.

Tutorial: Creating Dotted Lines Using Photoshop

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to customize a brush in Adobe® Photoshop® to create dotted lines.

There are a total of 8 images (about 150kb), not including the masthead, in this tutorial.

Step 1

Select the Brush tool from your tools palette, alternatively, just type “B” on your keyboard.
If the tools palette is not visible, go to the menubar and click Window > Tools.

[Read more….]

Happiness is…

Today, happiness is:

Seeing my little cat falling asleep in the middle of playing with a measuring tape
Warm coffee that tastes like golden sunshine, sweet cinnamon and roasted chestnuts
Squeezing the tummy of my fat cat, who was asleep on its back
My room resplendent in the rich glow of a warm morning

2 Fast, 2 Busy

Growing Happiness is 2 months old.
This month I’m busy with:

Creating themed entries for NaBloPoMo
Drinking soy everyday (Yup, I still do)
Trying to read a book a week
Trying to update my other site every other day
Working on a large project for a client

My days seem to be zooming past me at breakneck speed. With a project deadline in April, something’s gotta give. Because of this, I need to make some adjustments to the plan. I don’t think I can afford to post themed lists for the next two weeks because I’m too busy to even think of a theme that I could follow through for a week. I will continue to post here daily though (and most probably try to incorporate some kind of list).

Related Posts
One Promising Month
31 Days of Lists - I Have A Plan