7 Quick Takes, Volume 49

--1--

We spent a wonderful day last Saturday with Joe's parents.  Larry had spent part of the week in Williamsburg with them, and we drove down last Friday night and everyone went to Virginia Beach on Saturday.  We spend two fantastic hours on the beach, until the rain chased us away.

Nearby is a great  seafood restaurant called Catch 31, where we enjoyed a fantastic lunch.  The bronzed tilefish is to die for.  And they make a pretty good mojito, too.

--2--

I hunted for a couple of geocaches this week while the boys were at camps and swim practice and such.  I was able to get a little exercise too, you have to walk a little way to find them.  This one is called "Take Two Bites...Alice."  Can you see it?

Very clever.  And I only have a couple of teensy poison ivy bumps.

If you want to look for this geocache, click here.

--3--

Not far down the trail is another geocache called "Really Wet Land."  I love the setting for this one.

I searched in vain for that cache.  I even emailed the person who placed it for help, and I still couldn't find it.  If you want to try, go here.  Maybe you'll have better luck than me.

What I love about geocaching is that you have to keep your eyes open and you see things you might not notice, like the beautiful churchyard I showed you in this post.

Along the path this week I spotted these things:

--4--

We have a hummingbird feeder.  The other day Curly and Moe spotted a hummingbird taking a sip.  What we usually see is this (look closely):

Nice, huh?

--5--

This next take was going to be a rant about President Obama's latest idiocy, where he claimed that people who have successful businesses that they built from the ground up didn't actually build them.  I had lots of snarky things to say about that, including that Obama didn't really earn that worthless Nobel Peace Prize, someone better actually did, and that everyone knew it all along.  But then I opened up my Twitter feed (see Take Number 7 for my navel-gazing drivel about how maybe I should quit social networking, blah blah) to the news that fourteen (now they're saying twelve) people had been shot dead--and many more people badly injured--in a movie theater in Colorado.  I may or may not have more to say about that later; right now I'm just shocked and saddened.

Sometimes I wonder why we don't react as strongly when something like that happens overseas, like when someone blows up a bus full ofIsraeli tourists in Bulgaria.  I think it's because it's happening here, in our own country, and we're shocked because those things just don't happen in America.

--6--

Yesterday I posted another project on my Cooking Nick's Books blog.  It's a delicious pasta dish that my mother-in-law handed down to me--well, actually, Joe explained to me in detail how she used to make it and according to him, it's just like hers.  So far it's only gotten nine pageviews.  Nine.  If you haven't seen it, you're missing out on something yummy and REALLY EASY to make.  Check it out here!

(While you're at it, here's another one I published last summer for peach ice cream.  That one has only had nine views as well.  Can we make it ten? *smile*

--7--

You may see a significant reduction in my online presence very soon, partly because we'll have a lot going on during the latter part of the summer and I won't have much time for blogging and social networking.  There will be a lot for everyone to do to get ready for the new school year.  For the last several years I've been working about 20 hours a week on average; this year I'll be working 30.  That's not a whole lot, I know; lots of moms work 40 hours per week or more and still have time for other things.  But ten hours is ten hours, and every hour I spend online is one hour I'm missing out on (or neglecting) something else.  I need to take some time and re-evaluate how I want to spend time online, make sure my online presence is meaningful to myself and others.  It's so easy to idly browse Facebook and Twitter and blog readers with no real purpose, and then suddenly you've wasted an hour of your day doing nothing.  Plus with Blogger's new format, it's easier than ever to see exactly how many times people have viewed my blog posts, and the meager numbers are depressing.  At times I'm not sure if it's really worth the time I spend writing blog posts if only a handful of people are going to see them.  I'll never be an "it" blogger and get lots of traffic and comments (I haven't really taken the time to figure out how many comments per month I get on average because it varies, but I can go through an entire month of blogging and have none--which sounds hypocritical coming from me because I almost never leave comments) and I hope that the few people who do read this don't feel like they've wasted their time.  And how many people actually see every 140-character-or-less post I put up on Twitter?  Not many.

(Boy, it sure sounds like I'm whining, doesn't it?  Enough of that.  I do love blogging and social networking; maybe I just need to spend less time doing it.)

Jen Fulwiler is definitely an "it" blogger because, well, her blog rocks.  She's the one who invented "7 Quick Takes," so now that you've wasted five minutes of your day reading this one(ha ha), head on over to Conversion Diary and read her post from this week, and check out lots of other ones, too.  Have a wonderful weekend!