Today, we went to the store to do our weekly shopping. The car isn’t working so we had to pull our little shopping trolleys along. It might not look very cool, but it must be good for the environment and it saves us a lot of money.

The trouble is, wherever we go, there are grumpy old women telling us we’re in the way. Yeah. We’re in the way. Not them with their canes, crutches and walkers. There are also a couple of moms with young children and that troubles me too. I really, really want a baby so seeing others with babies and big bellies upsets me a lot.

From now on, we’re considering doing our shopping at ten in the evening. That’s when we run into a lot of 20- and 30-something singles without kids. For some reason they don’t bother us and we don’t seem to bother them.

It’s at night they come, the thoughts I’d rather not have. They whirl around in my mind, so in the end I can’t sleep, no matter how tired I am. It feels as if it’s never been darker, in my room and in my life. Worse, it feels as if it can only get darker and darker, not only because the autumn equinox has passed, but because it feels as if any chances I might have had, have come and gone without me being aware of it, and in any case I missed them.

‘How could you fail at…’

‘If you’d been any better at…, you would have…’

‘What guy would want a girl like you?’

‘Things keep getting worse and worse.’

‘What’s going to happen to…’

‘Everyone else has already…’

That’s how it sounds in my mind, night after night, until daylight comes through the window or I can’t take it anymore and I get up and turn on the light, until I sit down at my computer, or just starts doing anything, whatever, to silence the questions and accusations in my head. Then everything goes quiet, in the light, and maybe, if I get tired enough, in the dark.

I read this article and I realized that I agree with the person who wrote it. I love dictionaries. English ones, French ones, Swedish ones… In fact, if I could afford to, I’d buy a lot more of them. It’s just not the actual words, it’s their history. Just like the writer of that article, I can sit for hours just reading page after page, soaking up the language history, the linguistics etc…

Sounds nerdy, huh? Ok, I admit it. When it comes to the things I love to do, I am nerdy. Or geeky. Hm. I really should get those words cleared up. What I do know is that I’m definitely not a dork. Of course, there might be people who think so, but if I’m not mistaken, a dork can only be a guy. Or - have I known any female dorks? Possibly. Ok, I guess dork is gender neutral too.

My mom loves to read the morning papers. The paper editions, not the online versions. Since I’m frequently bored, I usually read them too, but I’m not nearly as enthusiastic. Why? There are several reasons, actually. One: it wastes enormous amounts of paper, kills trees and contributes to the destruction of our forests. Besides, in the morning it’s news, in the evening it’s trash. Another reason is that there are all these supplements. Some - like the one about culture - are fine, but the majority - about cars, buying homes, sports etc - are just trash, right away. Worthless spam that my mom has to pay for. That’s why I really like the online versions better. I get to read what I’m interested in and I can leave the rest. Except for the ads, that slow the site down until they drive me crazy, but that’s another story…

When I get up in the morning, my cat likes to sleep in. He loves the warmth and comfort. Sometimes he even manages to burrow under the covers, and lies with his head on my pillow. Not when I’m there, but any time during the day. It’s at night he gets active.

The funny thing is that he’s a longhair. I’ve found that the longhairs are usually more into warmth than the shorthairs. You’d think it would be the other way around, but I guess the shorthairs are more active and can’t be bothered to sleep in, like the longhairs.

When I’m really tired but have to get up anyway, I love to see my cat staying in bed, getting a little more sleep than me.

Next lesson in my computer/internet school. This time I thought I’d cover blogging sites. When I first heard of blogging it seemed alien to me. Then I tried it and couldn’t make it work, but eventually, I got the bug. Now I can’t imagine not blogging when I feel inspired. Of course, blogging requires a blog site, or software and a website and most of all a blog platform.

My favorite blog platform is WordPress. Yay! I absolutely adore WordPress. WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

The difference is that WordPress.com is a sort of web hotel, where you get your WP blog hosted for free. It does mean you get fewer choices in blog themes, plugins, widgets etc. You might also have trouble directing your domain name to your WP blog. Domain name - well, properly that should be covered in a separate post, one about homepages, webspace and, well, domain names. I’m not going to do that though. This is it. Blogs and homepages covered in one single blog post.

The reason for that is that today, most people hardly know what a homepage is and have trouble creating one. Even as late as a year ago, I was stubbornly sticking to my homepage and wanted to program it myself, using an editor, naturally. I’m not that good with html programming. Then it hit me - why should I do all the ground work, when my ‘thing’ is writing, primarily, and to some extent, photography?

I have come to the conclusion, that while I would love to make a blog theme 100 % as I like it, there are so many themes out there, that I can be pretty content with one someone else made.

Anyway, back to the domain name. It doesn’t have to be that expensive, if you want one. There’s no reason why you should need one, but if you do want one, it’s easy to get and won’t cost you too much. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. When isn’t there? It could be a bit tricky, configuring it. I’m afraid I can’t help you there, but there should be help available online.

You can also get a domain name for free. It won’t be a ‘real’ domain name, but it will shorten your URL and make it easier to remember. Uni.cc and cjb.net are the ones I’ve tried. Both work fine.

For a homepage, you’ll need webspace and if you don’t mind ads, you can get some for free. If not, there should be web hotels that have reasonable prices. My family and I are lucky enough to have found one that doesn’t charge much but offers a lot of space.

You’ll also need a web editor. There are some available online for free. I can’t tell you how good they are, because I haven’t tried them, but I’ve been told they’re quite good. Finally, you’ll need an ftp program, unless your webspace offers a web based file upload option.

Let’s get back to blogging. You’ll still need webspace if you decide to get your blog software from WordPress.org and if you like, a domain name. The upside is you get to choose any theme you like and you can get plugins and widgets.

The main advantage of both WP types is the ease of updating, editing etc. It’s a breeze compared to editing in a web editor. That’s why I decided in favor of a blog, rather than an old-fashioned homepage.

I thought I’d continue my computer/internet “school”. This time I’d like to get into social networks, the ones I like best.

Since I’m a vegan, animal and human rights advocate and so on, Care2 is one of my favorite sites. It’s a social network for people who ‘care’. Features include free email, messaging, free e cards that help save rainforest and free donations. There are also groups that you can create and/or join. There’s even an instant messaging service. You also get a personal profile page that you can customize, where you can add photos, movies etc.

There are several veggie related communities - CrueltyFree, Vegan World, VegSpace. They’re all nice, but don’t feel very active. Maybe I haven’t really gotten to know them well enough yet. You get a profile page, messaging etc.

For other specialized interests I can mention LiveJournal and Vox. LiveJournal is a community that evolves around blogging/journal writing. Vox is quite similar to LJ, but here you get to upload media - photos, movies, music etc.

Speaking of media - Zooomr is a very cool photo site. You get unlimited storage space and hotlinking is allowed - that means you can store your photos, then link to them on your blog, profile page, home page etc.

If you’re into animals there are several different networking sites intended for animal lovers. Petster is for people with all kinds of pets. Catster is for cat lovers and Dogster is for dog lovers. There are others - BunSpace is another example, but the basic level doesn’t really allow you to do anything, so I can’t tell you much about it.

For those of us who are passionate about our writing, there are online archives where you can post your stories and poems and hopefully get comments. Naturally, you can also look for things to read.

FanFiction.net is probably the main site for fan fiction enthusiasts, but there are others - FanWorks is another I can mention. There you can also upload artwork.
FictionPress is for original fiction.

Finally, I’d like to mention a language learning network - LiveMocha. I’ve only started using the site so I can’t tell you all that much, but so far it looks impressive. You can learn new languages or practice one you already know and get help from native speakers.

The other day I tried to email a friend of mine. It was just one of those questionaires that people forward to their friends, so it wasn’t very important, fortunately. Just as well, because my email bounced back. My guess is that my friend hadn’t logged on for a while and his account had been deleted. That sort of thing is really annoying, so I thought I’d suggest a couple of alternatives. Not to my friend. He wouldn’t listen, but I’m going to post them here instead.

If you want a web based email account, Icerocket is a nice choice. You get 100 mb of storage and on the Icerocket site, there’s a blog search engine. I like Icerocket, and I can really recommend it.

Fastmail.fm is another great email provider. You can use it as a web based email account, but if you like, you can also use the imap function. That means you can check your email in your mail program (Eudora, Mail etc). The downside is that you don’t get smtp, so you’ll need to go to the website to send emails. There’s also relatively little storage included (10 mb). However, there are several other levels to choose between, if you want to pay. One level (member) means a one time payment only, and there won’t be any ads/taglines at the bottom of the email. You also get smtp, and a bit more storage (16 mp).

The higher levels involve paying a certain sum of money every year. With those you get more storage and pop access.

There’s a bit of difference between pop and imap and if you want to set up your email program to receive your emails you’ll need to specify imap, not pop.

Imap means that you get the emails in your mail program, but they also remain on the server, which means you will have to go to website to delete emails, and it can eat up your storage quickly.

I can’t help being disappointed. Today I saw for myself for the first time what my LiveJournal looks to people who are not logged in - ie the majority of my friends. Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I deliberatey chose a ‘basic’ account, so I could have a nice looking journal, without many of the features the paid accounts get. And now they’ve found a way to cheat us twice over. We get the basic features but we still have to endure the ads.

I just hate ads on a site. Usually anyway. I know of a few sites where first of all the ads are so unobtrusive they don’t offend me and I don’t even notice them unless I go look for them, secondly, the ads are usually to the point. I’ll find merchandise and services that I’m interested in. But in general, ads are an eyesore. And now LJ has joined the ranks of those moneygrabbers. Sorry, but that’s how I feel. If LJ hadn’t been such a nice community I’d leave, but from now on, I don’t think I’ll blog there anymore, I’ll just post a link to my real blog/homepage. Anyone interested in my posts will have to click a link and leave the site.

Today, when I was out walking my sister’s dog, I ran into a girl walking her two dogs. One of them especially, was really sweet. A little dachshund. Lhasa apsos are my favorite, and I also like the other Tibetan breeds, but I am very fond of dachshunds too.

Unlike most dog owners we meet nowadays, this girl actually let the dogs meet and sniff each other, but strangely enough her male dog, a longhaired chihuahua, didn’t like my sister’s dog, and the girl assumed she was a male too. I guess she isn’t familiar with keeshonden. This one is actually quite small even for a female.

So I guess, from my point of view and my sister’s dog’s this was quite a good day.