That’s kind of a lot of TWOs–two thousand ten two two.  Maybe we are saying twenty ten now.

February Second, twenty ten. That is almost eight years after I started this blog. I just realized that means I’ve only been working on my book, The Russian American School of Tomorrow for seven years. I was beginning to feel like it was more than a hundred already.

But let me begin again:

Friends! Readers! Spammenters! Lend me your eyes!

Welcome to February. What will this month portend? I’m looking forward to it. Last weekend, before february started, Chris cleaned the garage by putting up shelving around the edges. He threw out a lot of things, and things are accessible now.

In every relationship, it is always the other person’s things that take up all the space. He immediately pointed out to me all the stuff I had that should be discarded. Fine. There were several boxes of clothes.

CLOTHES! an archeological TELL of clothing.  A dress I sewed for myself as a teenager. I LOVED that blue dress. Needs a little hemming, but I can wear it again.

My high school graduation dress! that confection I designed at age 17 to fulfill all the stifled formals I had missed by not attending a regular school.

It still fits, but only because … I was a slender yet voluptious teenager. I was drop-dead gorgeous, yet convinced I was very ugly. Seventeen magazine told me that models (the standard of beauty for everyone, don’t you know?) were 5’9 and weighed 115 pounds. I didn’t eat for a week and got down to 150, a weight I shall never see again. Ah…Isn’t it a shame that youth is wasted on the young? Anyway, when my mother was sewing the bodice of this dress, she refused to fit it. She said it was immodest, and my shape was hidden under a baggy bodice.

I’ve gained 20+ pounds in the intervening 20 years, and some inches on my waist. But the bodice still zips up.

I will have to post a picture for you all.

So, I haven’t written in a while. Sorry folks. I had some thoughts  to share about my daughter’s just-past first birthday, so I came here ready to post.

First, I stopped in the comments folder. Mostly it is spam, but I live for the responses from real reader. In the spam file, the first comment I found was this one, from a Carol Miller:

Please don’t take this the wrong way. I think your overall ideas are fine but you might want to put a little more thought into your next posts. I say this becuase it seems like your writing style has gone downhill a bit as opposed to your previous posts. – C.

Really, Carol? I wonder what she means. This comment is in response to this post. You don’t need to follow the link. It’s a video of Veronica scooting.

On further examination, Carol’s comment included a website link.

So, the spammer are now using insults to capture our attention. Perhaps we are low-self-esteem, needy webbloggers and will respond more readily to criticism.

Here’s another spam-sult:

Really? Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, I’m in agreement with you partially, but when you say something like this you actually have to be prepared to back it up.

Not all spammers are following this new trend. Here is an old-style compliment-spam from Walter T., purveyer of gardening tools:

Easily, the post is really the freshest on this laudable topic. I harmonize with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your incoming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the fantasti c lucidity in your writing. I will directly grab your rss feed to stay abreast of any updates. De lightful work and much success in your business efforts!

I am tempted to buy some of his tools, just because the man knows how to construct some flattery.

welcome to the next year…the next decade…the next whatever.

I haven’t written in a long time. i’m kind of tired. There is a lot to do.

I have a certain amount of trepidation for this upcoming year. I am stonger than I was last year, thanks to the character bootcamp that is motherhood.

I just i’ll just have to pull up my boots and march on. I have a lot I want to do.

This startling piece of art is very close to where I work. I didn’t discover it until today

You all know I do twitter. It’s right there on the sidebar. Most of my readers are my friends on facebook. Since I’ve started being active on Facebook (which is synched to my tweets) I have noticed a dive in  my blog readership.

Is it because my readers get their writtenbymurphy fix over there and don’t feel the need to come over here anymore?

NOW there is a social networking site at work that encourages us to join groups, “colleague” people, and have a work blog.

That’s a lot of virtual reality relationships to keep up with. It is worth it?

Well, I posted this on my work blog:

Health is catching

This story about how the company we keep affects us. This story talks about some studies that show being fat or smoking is influenced by the company you keep:

good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people.

I have noticed that certain friends will be bad influences on eating choices, and we all know people who are downers to be around. It makes a lot of sense that our social network sets the levels of what is acceptable.

I’m not exactly sure how to use this information; should I avoid my friends who are unhealthy? Should I try to be the one who gives positive peer pressure? Maybe just knowing that unhealthy behaviours are not ‘normal’ and should not be emulated is enough.

It explains a lot about how the level of obesity that is common in America came to be. Watching old re-runs of television shows that show ‘real’ people gives a shocking example of how we have changes as a population.

Personal responsibility has a lot to do with our levels of health.

 Expounding further on the idea that social networks affect our health and happines…Maybe the more the merrier, huh? Maybe it is a good idea to just spew inane tweets and blogposts about daily unimportant happenings, for the very reason that people like to be included.

MORE BIGGER FASTER!

(again)