Friday, December 25, 2009
The new spiritual blog has been created
As described in my post of 12/10/09, I either had a psychotic incident, or God asked me to start a spiritual blog. I promised Him I'd do it around Christmas, thinking only of the day off and not of the significance of the date (the jury is still totally out on the Jesus issue as far as I'm concerned-HE hasn't spoken to me yet).
The blog is done.
The blog is done.
Edit: and has been deleted because I stupidly gave the one person I'd told about it a good keyword and she found it.
One other bit of news: I mentioned in my post of 11/25/09 that there's a famous man I met last year, and made a little bit of a connection with, that I'll be seeing again early next year because I've found out where he'll be on that day. He's very good about taking time to talk to people after he's done whatever work he's doing at a given place, so I'm confident of that much, but naturally have been hoping to make a little more progress with him. Well, I just found out that a band that he's been a big fan of for literally over 20 years is going to be playing in a little club right near where he's going to be on that day... and because they're only playing a few dates, and he's got a set-in-stone schedule during that time period, this would be the ONLY date he could see them on this tour. Is it just me, or do you hear the massive clank of the karmic gears turning? Or, alternatively, see the hand of God at work? If this is a coincidence, it's one so gigantic that you couldn't put it in a book or a movie, because it'd be too ridiculous to believe... but it's REAL. Can I do it? Can I really get Famous Guy to go with my husband and I to see this band? Is this a crushing disappointment in the making or am I being given an astonishing chance to spend a little exciting social time with what I consider to be one of the world's most interesting men?
Do you share my amazement that such an "obvious" spiritually-related URL was available? "O Come All Ye Faithful" started playing as I was trying to come up with a URL, and the phrase "xxxxxx" has always been a powerful one for me, as those feelings typically elude me... this just doesn't feel like a coincidence.
Also not a coincidence was the blog skin I found; I'd planned to have the spiritual blog be karma colored and with some sort of imagery that suggested spirituality, and when I did a Google search for a skin, the first site in the results had the EXACT thing I was looking for right on the first page... even in a tiny thumbnail I could tell instantly that that was the one.
When things fall eerily into place like that, it's typically a sign of being on the right path; this makes a pretty good karmic case for my belief that it WAS God that dropped the words "spiritual blog" into my head, as opposed to it being some random psychotic thing.
The blog itself is pretty simple, and will stay that way; I don't have time to learn how to customize the funky template, just getting a few basics in there was ridiculously time-consuming... I literally used up ALL the precious spare time Christmas had afforded me with this project. Still, I feel reasonably confident that this was, and I can't believe I'm saying this, in accordance with God's will, and thus that further insights will be forthcoming... why would He want me to go through all that trouble just to take up more space on Blogger's servers?
Also not a coincidence was the blog skin I found; I'd planned to have the spiritual blog be karma colored and with some sort of imagery that suggested spirituality, and when I did a Google search for a skin, the first site in the results had the EXACT thing I was looking for right on the first page... even in a tiny thumbnail I could tell instantly that that was the one.
When things fall eerily into place like that, it's typically a sign of being on the right path; this makes a pretty good karmic case for my belief that it WAS God that dropped the words "spiritual blog" into my head, as opposed to it being some random psychotic thing.
The blog itself is pretty simple, and will stay that way; I don't have time to learn how to customize the funky template, just getting a few basics in there was ridiculously time-consuming... I literally used up ALL the precious spare time Christmas had afforded me with this project. Still, I feel reasonably confident that this was, and I can't believe I'm saying this, in accordance with God's will, and thus that further insights will be forthcoming... why would He want me to go through all that trouble just to take up more space on Blogger's servers?
(Edit 12-26-09: My limited html skills ended up being tested anyways; during my 5 hours of sack time, the bandwidth of the creator of the template ran out, and suddenly the new blog was awash in "bandwidth exceeded" notices. I KNEW when I saw in their commentary that prospective users didn't need to "worry" about hosting the images because they were already hosted that this would be a problem eventually... although I didn't expect it to be IMMEDIATELY!! Luckily, I'm anal enough that I tried to download the Karma Forest image last night, and, when it became clear that this was blocked, screen capped it; if I hadn't done that, I would've been out of luck until January 1 when the Photobucket account the template was using would presumably have unlocked.
Sadly, the outlining around the posting area was ALSO generated from Photobucket images... and the Twisted Sister video for "O Come All Ye Faithful" just came on, ok, ok, I'll round up the griping that's detracting from the purpose of the spiritual blog, lol. Suffice it to say that an hours-long comedy of errors ensued as I tried to delete the outline code, tried (unsuccessfully) to get Blogger to accept reinsertion of same when its removal de-formatted the entire blog, reloaded the template, reloaded all my *&^%$#@! widgets, created a tiny chunk of white as a jpg, inserted it in the outline code, and was finally finished... both with the blog layout and all my free time for the day.)
One other bit of news: I mentioned in my post of 11/25/09 that there's a famous man I met last year, and made a little bit of a connection with, that I'll be seeing again early next year because I've found out where he'll be on that day. He's very good about taking time to talk to people after he's done whatever work he's doing at a given place, so I'm confident of that much, but naturally have been hoping to make a little more progress with him. Well, I just found out that a band that he's been a big fan of for literally over 20 years is going to be playing in a little club right near where he's going to be on that day... and because they're only playing a few dates, and he's got a set-in-stone schedule during that time period, this would be the ONLY date he could see them on this tour. Is it just me, or do you hear the massive clank of the karmic gears turning? Or, alternatively, see the hand of God at work? If this is a coincidence, it's one so gigantic that you couldn't put it in a book or a movie, because it'd be too ridiculous to believe... but it's REAL. Can I do it? Can I really get Famous Guy to go with my husband and I to see this band? Is this a crushing disappointment in the making or am I being given an astonishing chance to spend a little exciting social time with what I consider to be one of the world's most interesting men?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
General Mills is reducing the sugar in kids' cereals
The fine folks at MyBlogSpark and General Mills sent me the following info:
"We're excited to share some great news for cereal lovers. This week General Mills announced a commitment to further reduce sugar in cereals advertised to kids under 12 to single digit grams of sugar per serving. The company has already been reducing sugar in cereals while increasing key nutrients, such as calcium and vitamin D, and providing whole grain.
Did you know that ready-to-eat cereal eaters consume less fat, less cholesterol and more fiber than non-cereal eaters? Cereals also deliver important vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients, making cereal a top source of key nutrients in children's diets.
Other cereal benefits:
Ready-to-eat cereals, including presweetened cereals, account for only 5% of sugar in children's diets.
Ready-to-eat cereal is the No. 1 source of whole grains in a child's diet today.
More frequent cereal eaters tend to have healthier body weights and lower Body Mass Index measures.
Studies also demonstrate the benefits of eating breakfast. A 1998 study showed that children who eat breakfast tend to perform better at school. Compared to children who skip breakfast, children who eat breakfast score higher on tests, are less likely to miss class or be tardy, have fewer reported discipline problems, and make fewer trips to the office.
For more information about kids and cereals, please visit Cereal Health and Wellness.
http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/health_wellness/cereal_health.aspx
Right now if you visit here you will find a $1 off coupon for one of four General Mills cereals
http://bricks.coupons.com/Start.asp?tqnm=qljheit24889505&bt=wi&o=60627&ci=1&c=GM&p=NY8LmWB2
"
They also sent me 4 coupons for free cereal; yours truly will be eating a TON of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in 2010. Less sugar means less of a spike and crash, so it works for me; less sugar for the kiddies is always a plus, too, although if YOUR kids are getting most of their whole grains from cereal you need to work on their diets. If you start out the day with a decent breakfast, you're less likely to grab donuts at mid-morning... and isn't one of your New Year's resolutions going to be to eat less junk food? :-)
"We're excited to share some great news for cereal lovers. This week General Mills announced a commitment to further reduce sugar in cereals advertised to kids under 12 to single digit grams of sugar per serving. The company has already been reducing sugar in cereals while increasing key nutrients, such as calcium and vitamin D, and providing whole grain.
Did you know that ready-to-eat cereal eaters consume less fat, less cholesterol and more fiber than non-cereal eaters? Cereals also deliver important vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients, making cereal a top source of key nutrients in children's diets.
Other cereal benefits:
Ready-to-eat cereals, including presweetened cereals, account for only 5% of sugar in children's diets.
Ready-to-eat cereal is the No. 1 source of whole grains in a child's diet today.
More frequent cereal eaters tend to have healthier body weights and lower Body Mass Index measures.
Studies also demonstrate the benefits of eating breakfast. A 1998 study showed that children who eat breakfast tend to perform better at school. Compared to children who skip breakfast, children who eat breakfast score higher on tests, are less likely to miss class or be tardy, have fewer reported discipline problems, and make fewer trips to the office.
For more information about kids and cereals, please visit Cereal Health and Wellness.
http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/health_wellness/cereal_health.aspx
Right now if you visit here you will find a $1 off coupon for one of four General Mills cereals
http://bricks.coupons.com/Start.asp?tqnm=qljheit24889505&bt=wi&o=60627&ci=1&c=GM&p=NY8LmWB2
"
They also sent me 4 coupons for free cereal; yours truly will be eating a TON of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in 2010. Less sugar means less of a spike and crash, so it works for me; less sugar for the kiddies is always a plus, too, although if YOUR kids are getting most of their whole grains from cereal you need to work on their diets. If you start out the day with a decent breakfast, you're less likely to grab donuts at mid-morning... and isn't one of your New Year's resolutions going to be to eat less junk food? :-)
