Thinking with my heart

Sometimes, I wish I were secretly super wealthy, solely for the purpose of helping people, or giving extravagant gifts people don't expect. I love giving gifts. I have an embarrassing tendency to go way overboard on things like Christmas. See, the wealth would have to be secret, so no one would know or treat you any differently, but then you could just do things like Oprah sometimes does, only without all the fanfare and being on live TV. I have friends I'd buy cars for, or expensive trips, or here, let me pay those bills, or buy you a year's worth of gas. Luckily my husband is a little more practical. We've talked about "If we won the lottery..." like people do, and he's given me this sort of horrified look and said "I'd have to give you a generosity budget, or you'd give it all away."

Well, kind of. I just really like helping people, and giving gifts. It's a thing. Sure, I'd buy myself a great car, and I'd travel to all the places I want to see, but most of my "I'd do this..." things involve buying friends cars and giving them trips. (Christmas shopping is one of my very favorite things, and I save up a budget every year specifically for that.) I'd buy everyone things like Kitchenaid stand mixers, laptops, xboxes, ect, if I could.

So, some of you may have seen the f-locked post I did last night, about the friends I'd like to help out and donate to. I've made that post private, because as much as I love to help people, I don't want to feel like I'm imposing on anyone else to do it. Sometimes my desire to help outpaces my common sense. This morning, I was thinking about it. I'd thought about doing one of those posts people do when they're trying to raise money for trips and things, those LJ yard sale posts. But I feel weird about that, too.

So, I've decided I'll do something a little different. I'm going to do a 'sale post' and offer a few things up for sale if people are interested - and once every couple or few days, I'll maybe add something special, like a piece of custom jewelry that won't be available in my Etsy store, or a pound of freshly roasted genuine Kona coffee. I'm not sure how to go about that - should I set a price on those things, or do something like an auction, where people can bid on the special thing via screened comments? I am still formulating, but any advice would be welcome. (Speaking of, I haven't done the screened comments thing before, really - how does that work? Select 'screen all' and only I can see the comments? I'm screening them to this post, so I can see how it works.)

And I'm still going to donate any Etsy sales for the next eighteen days to this friend fund I'm doing. I've been very blessed so far in my jewelry endeavors. I figure it won't hurt to be generous with them for a month.

I woke up a half hour early this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep.

I think I'm feeling a bit better today, but it's hard to tell. The stomach thing comes and goes. Like last night I couldn't eat dinner, but then at 2 or 3 in the morning, I woke up because I was hungry. I went back to sleep without eating, and woke up this morning still feeling sick. I packed my usual little breakfast anyway, and by the time I got to work, was ready to eat it. Right this second, my stomach feels fine, but I also feel like that could change from moment to moment.

I'm also currently not running a fever, and my throat feels fine. Maybe I'm coming out the other side of this bug without getting as bad as the husband. Um, that was before the coughing fit of a few moment ago. Craptastic.

Here's hoping I can get words down today, at least. Words I can keep, unlike yesterday's pathetic showing.

Note: Real Kona coffee is so smooth and mild, the usual ingredients of my latte completely overpower it. Tomorrow I shall have to try it black, with a touch of cream and sugar.

Interesting and timely (for me) link on cloning via jaylake.

Voting

I'm a huge proponent of voting. Here in the US, our ability to vote for what we want is one of our defining characteristics. I don't usually talk about it much (I avoid politics in general, as a rule here on my LJ), but I thought since the LJ advisory board elections are ending in a day or so, it was worth a mention to those who may not know about it/have not thought much about it.

Remember the great LJ Strikeout of 2007? Or the Apocalyptic Sequel? There are very good reasons why you should want a fandom friendly representative, or at least not the guy who appears to be actively against fandom. Especially since his tactics, past and present actions, and all around demeanor leave a lot to be desired. Others have talked about him in detail, and he's currently second place, and was first for quite some time.

There are some excellent pro-fandom candidates, one of which is currently in the lead - but needs a LOT more votes to keep that position:

legomymalfoy
rm
vichan

Supporter icarusancalion has collected links to well thought out endorsements of fandom friendly candidates here and here.

I know fandom on LJ are legion, so why wouldn't we use our numbers and vote?

VOTE