Gas Prices, Terri Schiavo, Blogging, And More

This has been the fastest week of my life! There has just been so much great stuff going on.

Lots of new fun and exciting things to share…

#1… These gas prices are just out of control… I spent $41.25 to fill up my SUV this morning! (And that was WITH the Sam’s Club discount!) FYI, here’s a fun Gas price watch site to keep your eye on. And here’s another way to find the lowest gas prices in your town.

#2… We unveiled another website that we created this week. It’s called Award-Winning Tennessee Bloggers. It’s a directory JUST of bloggers from our great state. It came about because… in all our research for The Fun Times Guide and other sites we found it interesting whenever we discovered that the owner of a particular website was right here from our neck of the woods! In an effort to give props to all our fellow Tennessee bloggers out there, we created Award-Winning Tennessee Bloggers.

#3… Terri Schiavo died. Wow. What an awful way to go… I didn’t follow the Terri Schiavo case that closely, but I found it hard to get the image out of my head of being STARVED to death. Could you imagine?! THAT part of it just didn’t seem right to me.

#4… Speaking of… How geeky am I??? I just realized that I get all of my late-breaking news from Blogs! (I found out about Terri’s death while surfing this site.) I don’t read the newspaper (too boring). I don’t watch TV news much (too melodramatic). I don’t even watch much REGULAR TV! That is, unless you count all the REALITY TV shows that I find myself glued to… (I consider them the video equivalent of a non-fiction book — the only kind I’ll read.)

#5… We signed up to become official members of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA) this week! The membership includes “independent/amateur bloggers, professional bloggers and professional writers who operate a personal blog, as well as those interested in the development of media blogging, citizen journalism, and related endeavors.” As members of MBA, we look forward to sharing ideas, networking, and brainstorming with fellow bloggers who are taking an active role in the growth and promotion of this unique form of online communication called “blogging”.

#6… On a related note, Blog Nashville, sponsored by Media Bloggers Association is planned for May 5-7, 2005 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee… And we’re going! It’s “a 3-day set of educational and informational sessions on blogging.” We cannot WAIT to actually meet some of Tennessee’s finest bloggers there.

#7… I have the BEST husband. He spent an entire afternoon cleaning our refrigerator — even taking out all the drawers & shelves! Oh, there’s a reason (of course)… He had busted a huge jar of pickles that was in the back when he accidentally shoved a thick glass crock through the thin glass wall of the pickle jar. (We’re talking a super-large-sized pickle jar here… as in “bulk” from Sam’s Club.) Ooops! Now we have pickle-flavored onions, pickle-flavored apples, pickle-flavored hot dogs, and pickle-flavored bagels.

#8… What a surprise when we went to Chili’s for dinner that night and when the server asked how Jim’s Chipotle Bleu Cheese Burger tasted, he said “pretty good, but it had a strong flavor like an unusually sweet pickle… like dill or something.” The server was a bit confused. It wasn’t until we got home, that we put the two together and realized Jim probably still had the remnants of pickle juice on his hands, in his nose, and apparently on his brain! (I don’t even think that burger HAD pickles on it!)

#9… People seem to like the way we’ve chosen to tie in Bud Light’s “Real Men of Genius” and “Real American Heroes” audio clips with other fun things we’ve seen & done. Glad you’re enjoying the related humorous links and resources. Here’s the bookmark:

#10… Our website stats are outrageous this week! People are coming from everywhere and spending a good deal of time just poking around. Part of it is coming from our new site Award-Winning Tennessee Bloggers, part of it is coming from Mark & Erin’s family and friends who first found us through this post about Sophie’s instructions for doing a cartwheel (:-) … and much of it is from the AWESOME blog directories of Blog Explosion and Blog Clicker! I can’t recommend these two sites enough. (Plus, each has a huge directory of Blogs to find more fun sites to browse in your spare time!)