My sweetie, The Scoot (as he is generally known on my blog), has a gramma, and she hasn’t been doing well. She was diagnosed with cancer and moved into his mom’s house earlier this year. Of late her condition has been declining, and she was in the hospital for awhile and now is in what the brochure describes as an end-of-life facility in Beaverton. Yesterday afternoon about 2pm I got a call that NOW is not the end, but you can probably see it from here. So I hopped in the car and hauled off to Beaverton. It was looking like I’d need to head back home before anyone else did, so to find out the best time to go, I asked Twitter and was told don’t bother till at least 6:30 or even 7. So I figured I was there for the evening and told Twitter that too. Here’s what happened*:

@kmcdade said “Oh, man. I’m so sorry.”
@ahockley said “I know it’s been hard lately. Sending positive thoughts towards you and your family.”
@drnormal said “Our thoughts are with you. <<hugs>>”
@turoczy said “Hang in there. Thinking of you.
@DeborahBeatty said “my thoughts are with you both.”
@mlpayne said “It is tough to watch a grandparent near the end. Praying for you guys!”
@chavtasticjinx said “*hug* to both of you”
@richburroughs said “:( Sorry Kelly, take care.”
@linuxaid said “hope all goes as well as it can tonight.”
@MeaganKate said “Sending good thoughts!”
@lawduck said “RT @MeaganKate: @verso Sending good thoughts! +1 – Big hugs.”
@chickieleighc said “You guys are in my heart tonight!”
@morganpdx said “<hugs>.  And then again.”
@jimdittmer said “I believe we’re all with you now…”
@kidmanproject said “Oh, Kelly, I’m so sorry to hear that. My best wishes to you all.”
@gwalter said “I’m sorry to hear about @pdxscott’s gramma. They are so precious to us.”
@dougcoleman said “@colemangirl & I send our *big hugs* and *positive vibes* your way.”
@yuetsu said “I’ve been through this with my mom, my dad & close friends. never easy. but good you’re there for her.
@Locket2You said “I’ll be thinking of you and your family tonight….”
@aaronjorbin said “I hope everything works out for the best #fingerscrossedforyou”
@QueenOChaos said “just read through; sorry to see whats happening. will keep you guys in my prayers.”
@KatrinaWheeler said “sorry to hear. Losing grandparents is really hard.”
@kathymcc said “I am so sorry.”
@ama23 said “So sorry to you all Kelly. Thoughts with you.”
@DixwellStillman said “Dixwell Stillman hopes @verso is doing OK. Best wishes to you and @pdxscott.”

These people listed above include: A County Commissioner’s wife, a jewelry designer, a contributor to ReadWriteWeb, former coworkers, friends, and a whole stack of people whom I have never even met. But because I have followed them on Twitter and interacted with them on Twitter, I got messages of support and love. And some of those people are in England, the eastern US, and I even got a hug sent via text from a friend in Sydney Australia, so I got love from all over the world. 140 characters at a time.

I know some people would find this weird, and I know some people already do think it’s odd or crazy or whatever. But last night when I was sitting in a room with a dying woman and a bunch of in-laws and waiting, I reached out to my own community and got back an astonishing amount of love and care. I just read a blog post written by another of my Twitter friends, and to put it in those terms: Last night Twitter was my baking soda. And it didn’t take any of those people very long at all to send me those little notes, but since they were thinking of me for just those couple of minutes, I was very touched. Even recounting it now, I’m going to need you to look over there for a minute. I have something in my eye.

* This is an exercise in concentration on something good that happened in the midst of an awful lot of bad and sad. I am only doing this to help cheer myself up. Thank you for reading all the way to the little tiny text at the end.

Yeah I’m going back a ways, but I don’t care.

I went to the fourth Ignite Portland event, where I got many hellos and conversations (partly because I’d Tweeted I would be there wearing a TARDIS Key and a Green Lantern Power Ring you know, because what girl leaves the house without either one of those?) and was even told my ring was “just reason number hundred an one why you rock!” And that is always nice to hear.

I went to the last Beer And Blog at the Green Dragon as its own entity (we still go but that was the last before Rogue bought it). I got some well wishes for my birthday and some nice beverages and had a good time talking to people and turning over ideas in my mind as a result of conversations with other people. (Let’s just say I totally understand why @turoczy is the master of #afterhours!) Also, I had someone waylay me on my way out the door who said she loved reading my blog, and that it was full of passion and just plain awesome. That stuck with me the WHOLE way home. (: (: (: (:

Also back there was my birthday. I had a really awesome birthday, with dim sum and James Bond and presents and Teh Scoot and TONS of tweets in my timeline full of good wishes and a general all around good day.

One of the tweets I got included a link from the lovely and talented (no, I’m not bluffing!) Cami Kaos, someone of whom I grow increasingly fonder like, EVERY day. (Make no mistake there’s a Cami Kaos Mash Note post coming in the future.)

And the following Monday I got some more well wishes, and had a lovely lunch with my cousin.

Plus the next day I got to have lunch with more of my family (my mom came down to go to the doctor) and had a great time with them.

I also had lunch with @OregonianSteve who now has a fair amount of free time, and we talked about local media and how it’s all getting very interesting and what The Media is going to do about it.

I went to Vegas for a family Thanksgiving, me and The Scoot met The Ambassador and his wife there, then we got to spend a week at Disneyland and other places, and also got to go to the Disneyland Candlelight Processional and it was amazing and fun. There will be more on this I’m sure, I just wanted to mention my family Thanksgiving.

And just this year I’ve had two very interesting conversations and ideas for a few interesting things. I also got a REALLY awesome direct message on Twitter about my Totally Gay Post from a published author who said if I’m not then I should be, and that was really good to hear too.

Last but by NO means least I have been called “practically my best grownup friend” by a six year old who has a fair number of grownup friends so to rank high on that list is pretty awesome. She thinks I’m great, and I think she’s pretty great too, so I’ve got that going for me which is nice.

Mostly this post is to remind me of all these lovely things when I am feeling really low, but I wanted to share with all of you (who am I kidding? BOTH of you) that there are good things in the world and I know sometimes you really have to look but I promise they are there.

One thing I’ve been considering lately is doing the list of Three Good Things. Just take a moment before bed and think of three positive things from the day’s events. You don’t have to write them down or anything, just come up with three and think of them for a moment. I think it will help so I’m going to start tonight. Will you be joining me? Do you do this already?

So I am a little stir crazy basically being housebound since Saturday evening (that was Freezing Rain time) and today declared on Twitter that I was losing my mind. A neighbor and fellow Tweep was on and getting ready to go out herself. I figured it was time my car had tire chains at least “in case” so I called around and found some just out on (the now infamous) 82nd. So @SharonG came by in her 4Runner and off we went. At least 82nd was pavement so it was ok to get around. We talked about this stretch of 82nd not being bad because there was Pho and having a mutual love of Vietnamese beef noodle soup we pulled in. We had a lovely lunch, and then off to get chains. We lost the place because the address in Google maps didn’t have much to do with where they ACTUALLY were, so as we headed down to 82nd and Holgate she got a text message reading only SOS and called to see what happened. Tire Tragedy at 92nd and Foster! So the second I had my chains we took off and of course got there in the nick of time! We didn’t end up doing anything helpful except lending moral support. Which is sort of disappointing since the universe put us almost exactly in the spot where they had ended up so we could go be helpful. That was basically it, a way around the problem had been sorted out after the call was made, so we ended up heading home. We came up 92nd and there on the right as a shining beacon of goodness was Burgerville. I mentioned they were on Twitter and had said earlier to hitch up the reindeer and head on in. So we were lured by the possibility of Chocolate Hazelnut Milkshakes and pulled in. We got around and the auto drive-through thing offered us that very thing! Again, the universe saying DO EET! So we tried. First there was debate about whether or not there were milkshakes of ANY variety. It was determined there were in fact milkshakes, but there was no hazelnut ‘syrup’ to give it all the actual hazelnutty flavor one (apparently) expects from a milkshake. So we tried, and eventually she sold us two. We got to the window and Sharon said “Do we get a discount for being experimental?” and we did! So that was cool. Then she continued up 92nd and we made it home safely.

After all that adventure, did I take a nap? Heck no! I shoveled a path for Teh Scoot to get from the curb to the garage door. I didn’t mean to, I meant to clear it so he could actually park in the driveway, but it SO didn’t happen after the snow got deeper AND I remembered we have a downhill slant to our driveway so it was even deeper than I originally thought. It was way more work than I was prepared for so I carved a path and called it good.

I measured today – 4″ at the front door (which is dry in all but the most intense of rainstorms, I have a covered porch that eliminates most of that). Just off the step (which was drifted so you couldn’t even see steps) it was EIGHTEEN inches. Out in front of the garage door it was more like two feet. Snow is currently up to the bumper of my car in the street. I’ll have photos up later, right now it’s late and I have to go in to work tomorrow (we were closed Monday and Tuesday) so I have to get some sleep.

Thanks to @SharonG for an awesome afternoon of pho and sliding and splashing around 82nd. Again, the power of Twitter. (:

I leave you with this: If SNOWPOCALYPSE is so unbelievably bad, just wait until THAWNAMI! You heard me.

This time I was there in one small capacity: Sponsor Entourage. Initech has sponsored every single Ignite event thus far, which is cool. So this time all I had to do was show up early as part of the cow-orker carpool and that was fantastic! Plus, Teh Scoot and I got a new video camera That Very Day which was shipped to my office so I got to try it out on unsuspecting presenters. Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

* YAY sponsor video! It’s so much faster and I liked the interstitial graphics and some of the videos were creative and fun. However this is a missed opportunity for geeks to scream their fool heads off in appreciation of The Silicon Florist, one Mister Rick Turoczy himself. While that bit is disappointing I think sponsor vids are generally fab.

* YAY audience! I saw a TON of people I didn’t recognize at all and that was awesome. I also saw people I knew or recognized who were hanging with other people I didn’t know. Not that I am some sort of social director or anything but it is fantastic to see that such a cross section of folks show up to Ignite since it started as a pretty geeky event. I love love love that it is not another Tweetup. (:

* BOO audience! Shut up. I know you got in free. I know you have been drinking beer since whenever you started drinking beer. But please. Shut. Up. I asked nicely and got nowhere. Don’t make me suggest to the organizers that we need ushers or drink limits to keep loud idiots like you from effing it up for everybody else.

* YAY organizers! I love that this event comes together the way it does, and useful feedback (read: not just people bitching) is always taken to heart. I love that there is a ticket system, and that showing it on your phone (i or otherwise) will get you in. I love that we are a community such that tickets are needed. I love that when I was the volunteer coordinator for #3 my experience was awesome.

* YAY volunteers! Organize all you want but it doesn’t do you any good if you have no backup and volunteers are all about having your back. Especially in Portland, I love that we have so many volunteers to help out. It’s so nice to know that if I’m hoping to have some sort of event where I need bodies it will totally happen. We are helpful and that is awesome.

* YAY Bagdad! They sort of volunteer for this too, but the staff is phenomenal and they put up with a full house just for us and I want to make sure they get appreciated for it. I know they don’t do it for free but they could make it a really painful experience if they wanted to and they totally don’t. It’s awesome!

* YAY speakers! It is awesome that we have people willing to talk about The Ten Commandments (of Karaoke), or How to bluff (by my wonderful friend Cami Kaos). I even discovered What Portland can learn from Kentucky. Which was awesome, I might add. It is amazing that we have people willing to get up in front of a Bagdad full of people and talk about whatever it is with slides for five minutes.

* YAY Twitter! You knew I’d get here eventually right? Just because I didn’t know everybody doesn’t mean I didn’t give or get hellos from a LOT of people. I forget how many people I actually do know or am at least acquainted with until I go someplace like Ignite and I’m there with cow-orkers who don’t know any of these people. From that point of view I do kind of look like I know everybody. (: Plus it was a couple of fateful tweets about Ignite Seattle that created the one we have! (And in case you didn’t know, we were on the Twitter trends list!)

* YAY community! I got to say hi to people and wave to more and cheer for presenters I knew and it was a really really good time. Plus someone said to me, and I quote, “That’s just reason 101 why you rock!” which made my day. I love that Portland turns out like this for events like this. We rule! This is why I love living here.

I won’t even go into the afterparty we had at the Spaceroom where Miss Cami and I had two glasses of punch and decided our husbands, who share the common quality of quietly tolerating their wives and their rampant geekery, should TOTALLY hang out. And that we managed to get the Silicon Florist himself to take a great chinposin avatar picture and even though I had to go home and wash my hair (nosmoking January can’t come soon enough!) I had a great time. I can’t wait for Five!

So here’s how you do your part to eliminate the waste of bandwidth that is Twitter Spammers:

1. Automatically block and report all GirlNameThreeDigitNumber usernames. (I’m kidding. A little.)
2. When you see the profile and it’s obviously a twat, first go to the side of their profile page and block them:

2a. Click that little block link down there at the bottom and then confirm that you really do want to block them. (Not required but a very good thing to do.) (Sorry PDXScott but you don’t follow a lot so you make a good example.)
3. After that happens it will take you back to your “home” page on Twitter. Then at the top of that page, click help.
4. From there, over on the left, click on submit request.
5. When you fill out the form, in the dropdown menu just choose “spam request” and fill out the form with the username of the spammer and then (and really, this is the important bit) In the bit where they ask you how you feel about it tell them it is too much work to report spammers!

I don’t like to complain about stuff just to complain so I am going to offer some suggestions:

* Put a “Report Spammer” link near the “Block” link.
* Put a “Block and Report Spammer” link near the “Block” link.
* Have a separate link on the help page for reporting spammers.
* Have a separate page for reporting spammers.

OK those are four things I came up with almost immediately off the top of my head. This shouldn’t be so difficult. Please devote some resources to this Twitter! Since we are starting to see more and more people sign up for Twitter and it gets more popular it is probably time for us to seriously consider spammers and how to deal with them. Secret follower ratio formulas are no good, and you should already know that by now-you are only hurting your most popular users and when those folks complain they are complaining to an awful lot of your other users. With the advent of other services (FriendFeed, Identi.ca) there’s a chance you could lose people to those other services. For good. Please don’t let that happen.

When they first met I was pleased for them. But around the edges of that happiness was a bit of jealousy flavored sadness. I have a dear girl friend (not a “girlfriend”, mind you, I have lots of those, all my gays are all “girlfriends”), named Rargirl. Or if you prefer, (even though I can’t remember why,) Myrtle, Wife of Thunderball. I would link to HER, but her newest entry is nearly a year old. She is my family and I love her. We used to do fun girl things, and collectively we would have girly moments. Neither of us are super girly the rest of the time, so having someone to sit around and do girl things with who would also drink and swear and bitch about other girls with me was really really nice. Unaball, Ambassador of Liptenstein, fell in love with and eventually married Rargirl. Which made it really awesome for Teh Scoot and I because we had another married couple to do things with. Like get loaded and play Mickey’s Speedway. Then they moved away. It was very sad for me because I haven’t really had a friend like her since.

But now, through some twist of fate (and Twitter, no doubt), I have been invited to Camp Naughty, where I will be one of FIVE (yes! Five!) campers having an evening filled with fun (with bondage tape), frivolity (Strange Love live broadcasting), and topped off with a happy ending (according to the schedule). I will be one of seven girls together to hang out and have fun and enjoy the evening. Mostly I’m shocked I was even considered, let alone picked!

In case you are new to the Bananaverse, I have a hard time reconciling being female (mani/pedi, wearing a bra, Hello Kitty) with everything else (Star Wars, computers, Nintendo, comic books), and for the most part I feel like I am not very good at being a girl. Sometimes though I feel like being a girl on my terms (wearing boy shorts and watching South Park) is my right and I only get to do it as a result of Women’s Lib and all of that. So when I see people I think are good at being girls, and they want to have anything at ALL to do with me I am very self conscious and a bit disbelieving about it. I’m totally looking forward to it and I’m terribly excited I got picked, but there’s still part of me that can’t believe the cool kids scooted over and made room for me at their table.

I’ll probably be Twittering from this Naughtiest of Camps, so you can catch me there if you want. And be sure to join us live for a very saucy Strange Love.