Sunday Gratitudes

A few things that are making me happy this week and that I’m grateful for:

True Blood

I’m really enjoying the campy Southern vampire show this season. Sookie is slightly more amusing than she has been in a while, but as usual it’s the supporting characters such as Eric, Pam, Lafayette, and even Tara this season, plus the sweet guest star appearances of Alfre Woodard and the addition of Christopher Meloni that keep me coming back week after week.

Finishing Projects

After a couple of years of thinking about it, I finally moved my Pagan blog from Blogger to WordPress a month or so ago. Then the real work began. I went through each and every single post deleting those that are no longer relevant and updating links, categories, and tags. 291 posts, 7 pages, 15 categories, 10 tags, and 710 comments later, it’s finally finished. I expect it will go live next week.

Another project that is wrapping up is the redesign of the Georgian Wicca website, which I’ve been working on and off since about December. I’m hoping to see that up live soon also.

Finally, I created a new Gmail. This sounds easy, but I underestimated everything involved. Moving contacts and updating my email on various websites was the easy part. Along with Gmail comes Google Reader, Google+, Google Calendar, Google Drive, YouTube, and details like syncing across computers and with mobile devices. Some things such as RSS subscriptions, calendar events, and documents can be moved from one account to another, but there is no transferring or merging with Google+ and YouTube, and this part meant closing the old accounts and creating new ones.

Cleaning Out the Virtual Clutter

Last week, I included cleaning out the clutter in my Sunday Gratitudes. I meant the physical clutter as I go through my belongings and decide what goes and what stays as I prepare to return to Australia. As part of my Google adventure, I deleted old email accounts and accounts to websites I never visit anymore and also pared down my social media by unsubscribing to some blogs, unfollowing some Twitter users, and revisiting my Facebook settings to make sure I’m seeing more from certain people and less from others. Additionally, I said goodbye to Pinterest, which is awesome and trendy right now in the social media marketing world, but also a huge time waster for me and one that doesn’t really enrich my life in any meaningful way.

Rachel and I having lunch at Latin Cafe 2000. We’re very glamorous. (Image by Vogue magazine.)

Lunch with an Old Friend

This week, I had lunch with an old friend. We met in the 9th grade, lost touch sometime during our 20s, and later reconnected on MySpace and stayed in touch on Facebook. We’ve both been in and out of Miami over the last 15 years and hadn’t seen each other or really talked in some years. She was in town this week and we met for lunch. I was happy to find our friendship pretty much intact.

New Make-Up

I don’t wear make-up on a regular basis, but I like to get dolled up when I go out. I don’t have a huge selection of make-up and tend to take the French wardrobe approach: buy a few versatile, high-quality basics. This week, I picked up some old favorites: Vintage Wine, my favorite red lipstick, from Clinique; Black Honey Almost Lipstick and Gloss, perfect for daily wear, also by Clinique; a brightening kit from benefit that includes travel size versions of complexion enhancer High Beam, Eye Bright, and bella bamba face powder; and a credit-card size eyeshadow palette by tokidoki. I like travel and sample sizes because, when you wear it as little as I do, you find that a regular-sized lipstick or mascara may be expire before you go through it. I made my purchases at Sephora, which I’m told isn’t in Australia. Department stores like Myer and David Jones probably carry these and other fine cosmetics.

What’s making you happy this week?