Not Ready For Prime Time Word Clouds

Today’s blog might be boring for some of you, seeing as it’s mostly about my friend, Doreen. She seems to think that I don’t talk about her enough in my blog (most people are trying to stay OUT of my blog), so as a joke I was going to do a “word cloud” with just her name, and then do my normal post. Well, normal for me. Meaning not very normal.

But, I had to test several different word cloud applications before I found one that A) wasn’t too complicated and B) got me the results I wanted.

Then, there was choosing all the descriptive words and phrases. You would think this would be easy, seeing as I have been friends with her for 15 years, but it was surprisingly hard, especially when I knew her family often reads my blog. I mean, I didn’t want them reading “dried up hoo-hah” and have that create a lot of uncomfortable questions. Of course, “dried up hoo-hah” in itself is a pretty uncomfortable condition and actually HAS been a subject of conversation, but not necessarily pertaining to Doreen. Therefore you will NOT see this group of words in her word cloud. So family – DON’T ASK HER ABOUT IT.

Long story short, creating the perfect word cloud took a long fricken time, and I ran out of days to put together any sort of post more provocative and thoughtful than “dried up hoo-hah”.

For those of you still reading and who might be interested, I used tagul.com to create my word cloud. I really really really really like this application. It’s so easy an Old Bag can use it, plus it has some added features for the younger, more advanced tech savvy crowd (you know, those of you without dried up hoo-hahs) – such as uploading your own shape. Uploading your own shape is really easy – you can use any photo – but the fewer colors and more sharply defined the better. I found silhouette pictures to work best. If you don’t know how to make your own, just search for them on the web. There are a ton of free silhouette clip art shapes out there.

Besides Doreen’s main one, see below for a few extra’s that I did so you can see the range of options you have with this application. You do have to register to use the site, but the majority of it is still free, and I had so much fun with this I am for sure going to use it again.

As an added bonus, you can use word clouds as puzzles.  Can you find all of the words/phrases that I used in Doreen’s cloud? There are at least 45 – possibly more.  I added more since I last counted, so I’m not sure.  Also, if you run across one that you are just dying to know the meaning behind – drop me a note in the comments. I may or may not tell you….lol.

For the record – Doreen is one of the best people in my life, and I am proud and so very blessed to call her friend. Thankfully, she has a great sense of humor!

See you next week with something really profound! Maybe!

Sue

PS – Doreen – this is your Friday Surprise!

 

 

Weekend Update

Welcome to “Weekend Update” – the portion of my blog where I fill you in on what’s been happening on life details that I may (or may not) have mentioned in past blogs.

100 Pushups – I start week 5 tomorrow.  To be honest, I’m not sure how well I will do.  Tomorrow’s sets are 36, 40, 30, 24, 40.  Seriously?  That’s 170 pushups.  One hundred seventy.  One.  Hundred. Seventy.  Pushups.  And I have not grown any fonder of them.

SAD Light – I ordered my SAD light (SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder – basically, you get depressed in the winter due to lack of light) and it came last Tuesday.  First of all, I have to say I paid a lot of money for something that looks and feels like it should cost ten bucks.  Then, not all of the lights worked – about 6 of them did not light.  Oh joy.  My skepticism and annoyance just multiplied by a billion.

Perhaps what I really need is actual sun on an actual beach for an undetermined length of time. Like 3 months.

However, because I did NOT want to package it back up, trudge to the post office, ship it back and then pray I got my money back, I decided to try it, regardless of the 6 dark LED’s.  I have used it for 30 minutes every morning since and the first three days (W-TH-F) I felt more awake and had continued energy at night after work.  However, I did not work out two of those three days because work was hair-curling crazy, so that may have influenced my evening energy.  On Saturday, I was talking about it with my sister, who said the energy increase was probably psychosomatic, something I kind of wondered about myself.  After which, I suddenly felt exhausted and promptly went home and took a nap.

So the jury is still out on the light.  I have read that it can take a few weeks to fully kick in, so I will keep using it.  I certainly don’t mind trying as it requires no real effort on my part, and I’m just drinking coffee and browsing the internet anyway in the morning.  Oh, and ironically, the 6 LED’s are now working.

Oh yes, I did just go there.

Y-M-C-A! – Sing it with me!  I joined on Thursday after work.  Haven’t gone yet and frankly I am a little stressed about trying to figure out when I will have time to go.  I am also stressed about putting on a bathing suit in front of strangers – something I don’t mind when I am at the beach because of all the weirdos at the beach anyway – I blend right in.  At the Y, I will be donning my suit with Michael Phelps Wanna-bes in goggles and speedos, pretending I know how to swim well enough to claim a lane in the cut throat world of 5am swimmers.

I am also going to try the spin classes.  A couple of the gals from the bike club also belong to the Y, so we are planning on meeting there to take them together.  And, heaven help me, I am probably going to start running on the indoor track.  Not that running in a circle and counting laps is what I want to do, but it’s slightly less boring than running on a treadmill.

Do not bathe us! We like smelling like corn chips!

A Clean Dog is Not a Happy Dog – However, a clean dog makes for a happy owner, especially when said dog sleeps right next to said owner’s face.  I noticed an increase in the corn chipiness of the air when one of them was next to me, and decided that November 19th, the day of their next grooming, was much to far away for my survival.  They now smell like soap and doggy perfume, which I am sure they hate with the heat of a 1000 burning suns, and that they are quietly plotting revenge.  The ‘revenge’ will likely show up in the hallway when I get up in the morning.  They are masters of the well placed doggie tootsie roll.  (This would be one of those “updates” that really have nothing to do with any past blog entries.  It’s pretty much just shameless yorkie poo promotion.  Or anti-promotion, as the case may be.)

And that, my friends, is that.  Time for bed and a new work week tomorrow. Hopefully, it will contain fewer moments of hair tearing than last week!

Sue