Oh the Lovely Randomness

Lately I have enjoyed some wonderful diversity to my daily activities, spending time doing such things as picking out a fabric for living room curtains (gold on gold striped), looking at baby names, and enjoying the blue-sky days that come along. In the process, I seem to have drained off the remnants of stress from grad school, as I woke this morning to realize that it has been weeks since I've had one of those dreams where I forgot something horribly important and then panicked for the rest of the dream or the one where my car brakes won't work (and I drive an old Toyota...amazing that one hasn't resurfaced, right?). Lovely.

While most of my new activities aren't terribly challenging mental endeavors, they have still been interesting in their own way. For example, I have discovered that people who write baby name books are, categorically, neurotic. Who feels compelled to include names from every country in the world? I mean, Sufi, Safyra, Sidditch, Thor? However, the Social Security Administration provides a list of the top 1000 names from recent years (and 100 years ago, for people wanting old-fashioned names...). 1000 is big enough to include all the commonly used, less commonly used, wierd spelling variants, and downright odd (but not celebrity strange) names you could ever want to consider. It's a great resource and time-saver. How often can you say THAT about a government-run website or organization?

Also, while searching for acceptable kitchen colors, I stumbled across www.hgtv.com which archives the current season of most HGTV shows. Excellent. After trying a sage green, minty green (accidental), white with blue tint (too light), baby blue (oops, darkened it too much...), carribean blue (...and then added too much green), we finally settled on a lovely blue-gray stormy sea color for the kitchen. And, I am happy to report, our marriage survived. I also intend to use their DIY section to attempt to upholster a headboard for our bed...I'll let you know how that goes.

Other websites recently discovered or often enjoyed:

Martha Stewart Recipes
Recipes from Top Chef

House Beautiful Kitchen paint colors, Generally beautiful designs
This Old House Fabric ideas, paint colors, DIY tips
Pottery Barn Such interesting fabrics and useful as a reference for all the different styles of curtains out there...although I probably couldn't make most of them.

Hulu Full episodes of all varieties for the cable-less
Project Runway episodes!

Family Life Today broadcasts
World Vision
Voice of the Martyrs

National Vital Statistics System - database of info and trends relating to births, deaths, marriage, divorce, etc.
Kids Count A website where you can search for information about youth in your state or county...graduation rates, abuse rates, percent in unemployed families, etc. VERY interesting. Run a profile on your county, if nothing else, just to get a sense of what the issues might be there.

Next to do? I think I may struggle along a bit farther on this quilt I've been working on for more than five years (...sigh...) and pull out the Spanish books. I'm getting rusty and it might be time to run a few electrical sparks through the old language neurons and make sure they still work.