Category: and More

I accidentally published my “Shaklee vs. Bonnie Round 1” on Saturday, when I wasn’t sure about publishing it at all. (Lesson learned: don’t keep unpublished posts in your Dashboard whilst deciding whether or not to use them.) Now it’s out there and rudely pushing aside my Super Sabado!

So we’ll have a Super Domingo instead, with a slightly different theme and menu. The theme: Geekiness. I do so want to be a geek, although I think real geeks don’t accidentally publish posts.

So what do geeks eat? Continue reading “Super Sabado… er… Domingo“

Recently I received an email from a legal beagle, presumably about this less than flattering post.

From: M—– M—– hidden-email@shaklee.com
Date: January 6, 2006 1:51:28 PM PST
To: –@bonniewren.com
Subject: Contact from Ballpoint Wren Reader

M——- M—- wrote:
I recently found your website containing Shaklee products. Please understand that Shaklee does not allow the use of Shaklee trademarks in any Internet ad (see pages 23 and 24 of the Statement of Privileges and Responsibilities of Shaklee Family Members (P&R). Thus, you must remove all Shaklee trademarks from your website, or use a pass code to protect the site. Shaklee trademarks include the “Shaklee” trade name, Shaklee product names, photos or graphics of Shaklee products where the label is visible, Shaklee logos, and Shaklee owned photos or phrases. You may, however, have a link to your shaklee.net site (if applicable).

Please notify me via return e-mail when you have completed these actions. Don’t hesitate to contact me at the above e-mail address if you have questions.

M——– M—–
Claims Administrator
Legal Department / Assisting Field Administration
Shaklee Corporation

Ms. MM seems to think I’m a Shaklee operative!

I must stay calm.

From: Ballpoint Wren < --@bonniewren.com>
Date: January 8, 2006 6:36:38 AM PST
To: M—- M—- hidden-email@shaklee.com
Subject: Re: Contact from Ballpoint Wren Reader

Dear M:

Thank you for contacting me with your concerns, but there’s a misunderstanding somewhere. I do not have any internet ads on my site, much less ads using Shaklee trademarks.

I don’t even have a copy of the “Statement of Privileges and Responsibilities of Shaklee Family Members (P&R),” so I couldn’t read pages 23 and 24 if I wanted to.

Frankly, I doubt I am even a member of the Shaklee family–in fact, I am positive I am not because if I was, I think somebody would’ve mentioned it to me by now. Like my mother! Ha! As if Mom could ever keep something like THAT a secret.

Still, I don’t want any big time corporate attorneys to think I’m treating their trademark concerns lightly, so rest assured that I have never and will never feature an internet ad containing a Shaklee trademark on my site. Never, ever, ever… I swear! You can count on me to follow through on this one!

Take care,

Bonnie Wren
AKA Ballpoint Wren

Home-a-rama

Tags: NutriFeron, Shaklee

Today’s Super Sabado is a little late, as I was sabotaged by a glass of wine last night.

Okay, two glasses of wine.

I blame it all on Michael B.* He asked if my snowman was drinking Syrah, a wine I’d never heard of before.

Then somebody gave us a bottle of Blackstone Syrah for Christmas and I opened it up last night. My goodness, that was good. (See Mark for more articulate commentary on wine.)

Two glasses of wine do not make for coherent blogging, so we’re off to a late start. Have a seat, order up some taquitos and quesadillas and we’ll get going on today’s Super Sabado: a New Year!

2006 Resolutions

In 2006, we may expect to see more cartoon nipples from Pat, and I am now resolved to never censor her cartooned nipples again, even in jest.

Dennie came up with some musings that sound an awful lot like resolutions to me. April’s got some “try to do betters” going on, rather than resolutions, and Val composed some New Year’s Writing Goals.

Paisley has got some, er, rather interesting resolutions, as generated by some online resolution makers. Meanwhile, resolutions and other good intentions are lost on messy desktops as Kait and I continue to wallow in chaos. She’s brave enough to show the world her chaos, but trust me: mine is WORSE.

Kitty has been publishing photos her dad took long, long ago. They are extremely interesting and full of forgotten detail, like cigarette cups! Who knew such things existed?

Say a prayer for Kitty’s mom, will you? And for Mel’s dad, who doubled as a giant pincushion when he had a spinal tap… Mel posted pictures…ick, ick, and ick… I hate needles!

More margarita gossip (is it late enough yet for some margaritas?):

Miss Snark rang out 2005 with another Crapometer run, this time on synopses. Now she’s asking readers to vote on Crapometer entries. Deadline is midnight, Monday, January 9.

Lebanon-based American journalist Michael J. Totten spent his holiday in Egypt and got shaken down by the police while visiting the pyramids. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 of his story.

You have to check this out: James has got his personal library catalogued ever so nicely, thanks to software called Delicious Library. All you need is a Mac and a webcam to read the barcode on the books, CDs or DVDs. I covet this.

Georganna’s busy selling her ebook: Be a Successful Writer.

And Teri‘s wondering who will teach our kids about an extremely serious subject. No, not sex! About polite cell phone usage.

I recently attended a funeral where a cell phone rang during prayers. The woman took her time getting it, and then answered it very loudly: “Hello? HelLO? HELLO?” I wanted to whack her.

So who’s going to teach our kids proper cell phone ettiquette if we don’t know it yet ourselves?

For those of you resolved to have neater laundry in 2006:

If you’ve followed me this far, here’s a trick they teach you in Honors Origami: How to Fold a Shirt. For those of you wondering about long sleeves, watch this, too.

And in case you’re interested, here’s how my kids fold their shirts.

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*Which reminds me: Mike’s got a cooking blog, too.

I’ve got approximately 40 people coming for brunch tomorrow, so all week has been a bit of this. Actually, it’s worse, because I thought I’d avoid the last-minute frenzies by spending the week cleaning up in advance; this way my New Year’s Eve could be spent calmly. Serenely. Contemplatively.

Ha.

In reality, my New Year’s Eve will be spent under a mushroom cloud of Pine-Sol as I re-clean the entire house. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this experience it is:

Nature abhors a clean kitchen. It also abhors clean bathrooms, clean living rooms, clean walls, clean floors—

Let’s just say that if it’s clean, Nature abhors it.

My plans for today: clean each room and then lock the door. My theory: if they can’t reach it, they can’t mess it up. Things might get a little stressful after I clean the bathrooms, but hey! If it’s a real emergency, they can use the facilities next door.

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Some 2005 thank yous are in order:

I want to thank all of my readers, new and old. Converting Ballpoint Wren from a static, HTML website to a dynamic, XHTML blog has been a wild ride. I’m still learning and I hope you’ll continue to bear with me.

Thanks to Eric Scheie for giving me my first big link and to Miss Snark for the biggest, baddest link of all. Even if she removes it tomorrow, I’ll always be grateful for her notice.

Thanks to the people who created WordPress blogging software. Maintaining my site has never been easier.

Thanks to Podz and MacManX who helped me out so much in the WordPress forums.

Thanks to my boys, who make me laugh every day. Thanks to my Sissy, who is always there for me.

And finally, thanks to my Hubby, who has always loved me and believed in me no matter what, who gave me permission to write about him (as long as it’s funny and I do it frequently), and who pesters me if I don’t post daily (you should’ve heard him complain this week).

Happy new year, my friends. Here’s hoping 2006 will be a good year for all of us.

My friend has lost her dearest love, her husband, the father of her two young children. He went unexpectedly. Suddenly. Without giving them a chance to say goodbye.

He was too young to die, and yet he did.

Ladies, hug your men and tell them you love them.

Men, squeeze your ladies, kiss them and tell them how much they mean to you.

All this holiday hustle and rush… it’s not important. Nothing is as important in this world as the people you love. Give them your attention right now.

Right NOW.

Because you never know.

I challenged my friends to reinvent themselves as snowmen via Michael Whaite’s Snow Gallery… and some of you came up with some really good ones!

I think Kait of Kait’s Chaos looks like she could be my sister. You decide. Compare Kait with my snowman, which you can see up in the header:

And here is Kait’s infamous Dawg.

Kait raises a good question: how come the Snow Gallery isn’t equipped with coffee?

Mel from the Smooshie Diaries has a bustier take on her snowman:

Right about now my snowman feels like she needs to pad her snow bra.

Of all these, I think my favorites are from April of Desperate Writer:

If you haven’t seen them already, check out Kitty’s Texan snowman and Pat’s wickedly fun version of herself and her man.

If I missed anybody else, let me know! Don’t be coy… e-mail me and tell me you’ve done one. Otherwise I might miss it with all the Christmas stuff I have yet to do. I still haven’t sent out all my Christmas cards!

But here’s the good news: yesterday I mailed a card regular mail from San Diego to Los Angeles, and it got there today! Hooray for the United States Postal Service!

snowman, fun

Even those BloggingHeads guys got into the snowman concept:

Today’s Super Sabado will be short, because Christmas is almost here and I’m short on time. But I think I’ll focus on Michael Whaite’s Snow Gallery, which is addictive enough that it ought to be illegal. So flick off the virtual snow flakes, grab a margarita and some chips and check out some wintry creativity.

Slide that salsa bowl down this way, will you, please? Continue reading “Super Sabado: Snowmen and other diversions”

I have Kait to thank for all the lost time I spent playing with the dang thing, too.

Today’s nosh about the chip bowl concerns Man’s Best Friend. Sort of. So let’s order and I’ll begin. Waiter, blended with salt for me, please.

At first I thought Lachlan’s Sumi had figured out how to make snowballs during her first foray into snow, but really, she cheated (with a tennis ball).

She ought to check out Eric Scheie’s Coco, whose first snow day inspired her to create mysterious designs that leave Eric mystified. What she says doesn’t make much sense, though, unless it’s viewed from a high altitude. I was lucky enough to ask a passing helicopter pilot to snap a photo for us all:

Poor Coco! I guess it’s true: on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

Miss Snark’s Killer Yap was featured in several winning entries of the George Clooney contest submissions inspired by the clever Kitty. (And this paragraph is nothing more than a shameless effort to let you know I made it into Miss Snark’s equivalent of an honorable mention, although I can’t put it on my resume because Miss Snark says that would be silly.)

Pat’s greyhound is going through a weird sighthound kick directed at the infamous Rat Dog.

Screamwriter alerted me to an alarming incident involving a dog… and some killer squirrels.

The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people.

A “big” stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.

“They literally gutted the dog,” local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

“When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them.”

“Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’”

I see this as one explanation for the fall of the USSR: the Soviets foolishly spent their genetic improvement energies on killer squirrels, who apparently turned on their masters, cleaning out the highest eschelon of KGB operatives before they escaped to the Maritime Territory.

If the Soviets had bothered to improve their canines (rather than eject them into space) Russia would now be run by Borzoi, but now they’re stuck with dog-killing squirrels and Putin.

More Doggie News (sort of):

I take this post as proof Winston has successfully infiltrated Podz’s domain. Apparently new to the dog-human relationship, Podz wonders if making dogs obey is demeaning to them.

Alana Marie found a good use for one of her dog kennels when she rescued a lost homing pigeon, who I think wasn’t lost so much as running away from a guy named Horst. It ends happily, but now she needs suggestions for what to do with 40 pounds of pigeon feed.

Okay, so that wasn’t about a dog, but I love it when people rescue creatures. Like Mira, who rescued a beautiful calico and is currently looking for Gaelic names. Or Kait, who’s thinking about donating to the International Wolf Center, a way to rescue wolves.

And finally, I’d like to show you Mojo’s version of “The Princess and the Pea.”

Don’t drop any tortilla chips, please. He eats EVERYTHING.