MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #46

I hadn't planned to do this week's Friday Fill-in since we're on vacation, but here I am sitting with Dave and the kids at a model railroaders' auction in Harrisburg with some time to kill, so I thought I'd have a little fun!

Besides, I'm excited to share my Amazing Race plans to conquer the world :-)

1. Are you a different person than you were five years ago? submitted by Sisterly Thoughts

Let's do the math...it was June 2006 five years ago.  So I was living in NC, I'd been a non-active duty stay-at-home Mom for about a year.

I had a very hard time transitioning from active duty with plenty of adult interaction to the stay-home Mom life, spending days mostly with the kids.  I was accustomed to sharing all the chores, including getting up in the middle of the night for the babies.  Every time I'd do my reserve weekends, I'd come home with visions in my head of how much extra work I'd want to do -- and then remember, "Oh wait, my responsibility is to my family first now...."

Five years later, I have struck a nice balance, IMHO.  Definitely a different place than 5 years ago.  No longer resentful of my husband being the one on active duty.  The only household chore (of the shared chores we used to do) is that I still refuse to pack my husbands' lunches.  I always seem to do something wrong with his lunches, so one day I just stopped.  It's a pretty sticky point in our marriage ;-)

2. If you could go on Amazing Race, who would you take with you as your partner and why? submitted by Thoughts from a Poekitten

My family LOVES The Amazing Race!  We stop everything at 7pm on Sundays (when the show is on) and we watch it together...I'm reminded of old fashioned family gatherings to watching wholesome shows such as The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie.  It's the only show we all watch together without fail (even if it's on the DVR).

My youngest son (age 6) has been wanting to do the race one day.  He's incessantly talking about "what I would do if I were on the Amazing Race!".  I told him about the season where they did a family race and he'd like to do that.  He has also said that he'd want to do it with me if he's a grownup.  So sweet...

(He also bawled his eyes out and threatened to never watch the show again the week that Jet and Cord were eliminated this past season.)

But if I had the chance to run the race starting tomorrow, since our kids are too young, I'd be running the race with my Dear Husband Dave, hands down!  We have a LOT of experience with public transportation, understanding the ins and outs of how to quickly schedule flights, train rides, etc., and experimenting with strange foods!  I can drive a stick shift on foreign car rentals.  In our younger days we've attempted white water rafting, mountain climbing, etc.

And I also think we could run pretty darned fast!

3. Does Facebook or Twitter actually bring more stress or good in to your life? submitted by Just an Arizona Girl

That's a tough one.  Overall, this is a great tool to keep connected with my family.  (Just about) every single person in my life who I'd want to keep in touch with is on Facebook.

Unfortunately I spend too much time on Twitter and Facebook, where I could be spending the time on otehr things, such as playing with my kids, keeping up with the housework, or crocheting for the HAP charity with which I'm involved.

4. June is National Soul Food Month- what’s your soul food? submitted by NH Girl Displaced

Chicken fried steak!  I LOVE IT!

Sadly, though, I only get a chance to eat it once every two years or so.  I don't make it for my family -- I rarely fry foods in my house -- and I rarely get to diners or dives where chicken fried steaks are REALLY good!  I had my last one a couple years ago in a moment of weakness at a Cracker Barrel restaurant...it was decent.

For a fun read, I recommend the excerpt about chicken fried steak from Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  I found the excerpt here, but the whole book is fun too!

5. If you could live in any other era than the current, which one would it? why?submitted by Sugar in My Grits

I'm convinced I would have been better off in turn-of-the-century America.  There's a certain beauty to that time period, when girls were JUST ABLE to start pursuing their own careers without social suicide, and America was undergoing a technological revolution that wouldn't be seen again until World War II.

Just watch Meet Me in St. Louis, starring Judy Garland.  One of my favorites, set in 1904!  Maybe because I'm sitting in a train convention right now and the song "Clang Clang Clang Went the Trolley" (more appropriately known as "The Trolley Song") is running through my head.

Ironing Out A Few Kinks...

This is a test post, just trying to iron out a few kinks as I get that Facebook page running.  I'm trying out a couple of different RSS-feed capabilities, and whoever's is fastest with transferring posts from Blogger to Facebook wins :-)

All in The Name of Laziness...

At the risk of sounding megalomaniacal, this evening I started a Facebook page expressly for this blog.  I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened...and while on vacation, at that!  Facebook made some changes over the past few months about how a "Group" or "Fan Page" is used and managed...in addition, RSS feeds into my own personal page have fallen apart earlier this month.  I used to have automatic Facebook profile notifications when I'd post to Picasaweb, You Tube and Blogger.  None of it happens automatically anymore...

"Oh no, Major Mom has to do work?  Stop the world!"

What motivated me to do it this weekend?  I tossed out a couple of quick posts over the weekend about Dave's Father's Day ode on GeekMom and his feature article in N-Scale Magazine.  For some reason, the Twitter connection that posts new blog posts straight to Facebook (in the form of a shortened URL like this one) automatically decided to send the same post every hour for 4 hours to Twitter...and therefore to Facebook.

I didn't mean to be so spammy, really, I didn't!

Therefore, because I was hit with a double whammy of (a) no more Blogger post imports and (b) multiple notifications of the same blog post from Twitter, I set up a page that expressly imports my blog posts, and the only people who will see those blog posts on Facebook now are those who "Like" the page.  If you are on Facebook, you should be able to see the tag on the right hand side inviting you to "Like" the page (if you haven't already).  If you aren't on Facebook, then I guess all you see is a Facebook.com logo.

In addition, I added a "Tweet This" type of widget to each of the posts.  It's right before the first words of the post.  If you like what you read, then if you have a Twitter account, you can share it via Twitter.  Go ahead, Tweet it!

I've been realizing that Facebook and Twitter, being the microblogs they are, doesn't have a user-friendly archive capability.  Try paging back in time on your profile page and see how far back you can go...it'll go back a ways, but in my case you only see about 2-3 days worth of posts at a time.  You have to click "Older Posts" over...and over...and over...and over....

Compare that to this blog, where you can easily search posts by year, by month, by label topic, or a generic keyword search.  You can page back all the way to the beginning quite easily.

PS: I'm also writing this to test how quickly it'll import to Facebook.  I get the feeling it still isn't quick...

Meet My Famous Dear Husband!

Imagine my delight when I saw N-Scale Magazine sitting in a magazine rack yesterday at the Strasburg Station train store in Lancaster, PA.

And here's Dave's super-awesome front cover picture, and inside is his feature article! I wish I could share the whole article here with you, but from our vacation we can't do it -- and instead will refer you to your favorite model railroading hobby shop for the latest copy.

The work Dave had put into the photographs for this article was remarkable. I'd estimate over 1000 pictures, and over 20 hours worth of work staging the shots and getting the color composition right. We definitely used our small, but capable Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS to the max! Our friend Maryann @ Fotomom helped Dave with the photography quite a bit and we're very grateful for her expertise and advice.

It also has us considering whether a higher quality camera -- such as a DSLR -- is in order. We discussed it earlier this spring, but it's an investment that will have to wait until after we pay off our summer travel.

As they say in the Navy (because the Air Force doesn't have a cool, historically significant saying like this), BRAVO ZULU Dear Husband!

Happy Belated Father's Day!

Happy Belated Father's Day to any of my Dad readers!  We were happy to get to spend time with Dave's Dad early in the day at Dave's family reunion in Pennsylvania, then we drove down to my parents' house in West Virginia in time for dinner with my Dad.

Earlier in the week GeekMom solicited the writers for some posts for Father's Day. I was encouraged to write one about Dave's model railroading and the project he'd been doing with Jacob.  It was shown over at GeekMom on Father's Day!

With Dave's recent N-Scale Magazine article (on the shelves right now!) and this week's talk at the N-Scale Convention in Hershey, PA, it was appropriate to show off a little about him!