All dressed up with somewhere to go

I decided to play with the new Blogger in Draft templates, just for fun, since so many others have said the system works pretty well. Should have known that once I started exploring, I'd want to make a change. So here I am at 3 a.m. putting a new, dressed-up version of BLissed-Out Grandma online. I don't love everything about it, but it's time to get some sleep. Besides, the last change I tried to make got the error message that probably means too many of you are doing the same thing and the system is overloaded.

This new template is a little more spacious than the old one...like letting out the seams just a bit. Not that I would know about that. This one also has slightly larger type...not that I would need that, either.

Have you tried it? Did you find it easy to work with? One question I have: why doesn't a person's header just get centered in the space instead of placed flush left? If it were centered, people wouldn't have to make new, wider headers. Just sayin.'

But do they wear pantyhose?

Things I learned this week:

(1) Apparently if you're a three-year-old boy (a state that can last much longer than a single year, I'm told) the word "pantyhose" is hysterically funny. It sets off paroxysms of laughter (you remember that word from a vocab list, right?). And about the time you are all done laughing, if Grandma says it again, you'll laugh again. And again.

(2) It's easy to tell boys from girls. Woodpeckers, both male and female, have been visiting our bird feeders. The bird book explained that males have red spots on the backs of their heads, and females don't. Meanwhile, Mommy and Daddy have talked with Augie and Vi about male and female body parts; they know that boys have penises and girls have vaginas. Today at Wild Rumpus Daycare we had this conversation:

Pa: Is Augie a boy?

Augie: Yes.

Pa: Who else is a boy?

Augie: My friend Dad, and Pa.

Pa: Is ViMae a boy?

Augie (laughing): No, she's a girl.

Pa: Are Mommy and Grandma boys?

Augie (laughing again): No, they're girls.

Pa: How can you tell?

Augie: Because they don't have red spots on the back of their heads.

WOW: A nifty new blog network

There's a new network in the blogiverse. I feel like it might be a good fit for me, and probably for you, too.

Words of Wisdom is "a place for bloggers who enjoy reading and writing great content to find each other." Its founders define great content as being thought-provoking or insightful, serious or humorous, on any topic...blog posts that make the reader stop and think and perhaps join the conversation with a well thought-out comment.

WOW was launched over the weekend. I was the 11th person to click "Follow," and as I write this there are 38. I suspect it's going to grow pretty quickly. Check it out, of you're so inclined.

It was from a member of WOW that I learned I missed some excitement last week at The Secret is in the Sauce. SITS tends to draw young moms, and it can be a great way to make new contacts, but it wasn't a good fit for me so I unsubscribed last week. At that very moment, The New York Times published its story on "mommy bloggers," featuring the Bloggy Boot Camp put on by SITS' founders. You can read Anita's take on the resulting controversy at A Woman, A Wife, A Mom.

Here's the NYT story: Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand.

Terrorists, vasectomies, and March Madness

The St. Paul Pioneer Press has a long-running feature called "Bulletin Board," where folks call or email anecdotes, cute kid stories, dumb-things-my-spouse-just-did, and other little ditties about daily life. It's a forerunner of the blogging community. They even have memes. Like for a month people will send in lists of "simple pleasures," before moving on to "strange foods our family used to eat."

A really big deal is when somebody gets a certified B-M. It stands for Baader-Meinhof, and more specifically the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. If you never heard of it before, maybe you will again, really soon. Which means you'll have had a B-M of your own!

Translation: Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon refers to hearing about something noteworthy and previously unknown to you, and then encountering it again very soon, from a completely different source. The newspaper's Bulletin Board feature is moderated, so someone decides whether your reported phenomenon truly qualifies for B-M status or whether it's just a coincidence.

Tonight, a local TV station reported on 10 babies born all about the same time in a local suburb. One of the new moms said, "I wonder whether there will also be a boom in vasectomies, just in time for March Madness." Huh?

Two minutes later I was reading my newspaper and there it was: it seems that a lot of men choose to schedule vasectomies (presumably they were going to get them anyway) during the NCAA basketball tournaments so they can get a pass to watch college basketball!

Eureka, I thought. A clear case of B-M. Then I had second thoughts. If the TV story was taped just today and the woman simply saw this story in the morning paper, then we have a coincidence, not a B-M.

Short of calling the station, I have no way to know. Sigh.

The name of the phenomenon comes from the Baader-Meinhof Gang, a media term applied to the Red Army Faction, a violent German left-wing terrorist group active from 1970 to 1988. There. If you never heard of them before, watch to see how soon you come across their name again. The Pioneer Press says a second occurrence must come within 24 hours to qualify as a B-M. Their rule, not mine.